How To Prevent Unwanted Fat Gain In Order To Boost Metabolism
So far we’ve covered a few methods in how to boost your metabolism including managing your thyroid hormone and improving your circadian rhythm. Now we’ll discuss possibly the most intuitive connection to metabolism: preventing fat gain.
Losing weight is easier said than done. Most of us know the fact that preventing weight gain is the best strategy to promote overall health and well-being. Becoming fat or obese is like developing alcohol addiction. If you have been drinking for a long time, you might have a harder time working on it for the rest of your life.
However, when it comes to dieting or shedding pounds, being overweight in the first place may have disadvantages for maintaining a healthy metabolic rate. We say this because losing kilos also slows down or decreases the metabolic rate. But this analogy isn’t correct in the sense that decreased metabolic rate will need to stay lower if you used to be obese.
The Body’s Rate At Burning Fat
Boosting metabolism is no less than a holy grail for weight watchers regardless of what diet regime they follow. The rate at which your body burns fats typically depends on many things. While you may have seen people with an inherited speedy metabolism, a large percentage of people have to burn calories to accelerate it (even while they’re resting).
However, if your weight loss has stalled, and you believe your faulty metabolism is the reason, you might be right. Though you can do anything to increase metabolism naturally from exercising to eating healthy, preventing unwanted fat gain is essential.
Your Basal Metabolic Rate And Its Importance
It’s important to understand the role of metabolic rate in the process. In general, metabolism refers to a chemical process that takes place in the body. But what you might be interested in is your basal metabolic rate, which is the amount of energy your body uses every day to stay alive. Your metabolic rate accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the total expenditure of your calories. It includes your muscle to fat ratio. Though there are online estimators that can calculate BMR, they aren’t accurate in most cases. It is always better to speak to a specialist to calculate BMR. Specialists use calorimeters to measure the amount of CO2 you breathe out to find your basal metabolic rate.
How Weight Fluctuation Ties In
As said above, if you have been obese or fat, your resting metabolic rate increases. However, when you lose weight, the basal metabolic rate decreases compared to people who were not overweight if there is no change in other variables.
It is worth mentioning that a lower metabolic rate is not just about a low level of fat-free mass in the body. That means if you have been overweight previously, it is possible that you had a lower resting metabolic rate despite the recovery of fat-free mass.
In other words, lower rates of metabolism can become a risk factor for weight regain. If you increase your metabolic rate, you will end up having increased appetite and strong hunger sensations. Of course, it may lead you to heavy cravings and MORE eating.
So what’s the solution? Prevent unwanted fat gain. Yes, you read it correctly. You need to make sure that you don’t get fat in the first place to keep your basal metabolic at an optimal rate. All in all, metabolic rate plays an important role in the weight loss process whereas you must avoid gaining body fat to boost your metabolism.