What Is Metabolism?
Metabolism is the life giving process that happens when we consume food and liquid. Our bodies turn food into usable energy. In essence, metabolism is like the motor inside a car. A car’s engine uses petrol to create kinetic (useful) energy in the same way our bodies metabolize food to create energy that we can use.
Okay, but how does metabolism work?
I’m not a scientist so I’ll be giving you an unscientific answer. Whether we’re eating carbohydrates, protein or fats, all foods contain calories in some form or another. When we eat this food our bodies use those calories as stored energy which can then be used to convert the food into useful human energy.
Metabolism is the sum of all chemical processes required to break down food for energy and synthesize complex molecules for cell growth. Enzymes catalyze the individual chemical reactions of metabolism–they break down food for use in the body or synthesize complex molecules like the DNA needed in cell division.
Breaking it down even further, the molecules inside the food we eat, are broken down into smaller pieces using enzymes.
So calories are bad, right?
Wrong. Let’s think of calories as electricity. Eating the various types of food gives off varying levels of electricity. As ‘human machines’ we need ‘electricity’ (or calories) in order to function. So in this sense calories are actually vital for human life! The problem occurs when we consume far more calories than we need.
Why is metabolism important in fitness?
Glad you asked. An efficient metabolism is the key to ensuring we do not store too much energy as fat cells. If the food you’re eating gives you more energy than your body needs to perform day-to-day functions, then the calories from the food are stored in our body as energy reserves. More often than not, these ‘reserves’ will be stored as fat tissue.
Can I hack my body’s metabolism to metabolize faster
We live in an age where everyone is hacking stuff to make it work better. You can hack your Xbox to play ‘backup’ copies of games and DVDs, or you can hack your iPhone to use it on any mobile phone network. Unfortunately no, you can’t hack your bodies metabolism to make it work faster. People will always try and tell you that if you eat heaps of small meals throughout the day that you can in fact get your metabolism to go into overdrive so that it ‘never sleeps’.
Initially these kind of changes in eating may speed up your metabolism, but as your body adjusts to the new eating habits it will actually slow down again. Unfortunately eating in this kind of way is more likely to increase the buildup of toxins in our body more than anything. A lot of people that try changing their eating schedule like this will find any weight they lose will be regained and some.
What does speed up our metabolism then?
Our bodies need the right environment in order to metabolize food efficiently. Amino acids are used to build enzymes, and the vitamins and minerals we include in our diet are needed for these metabolic enzymes to function. Instead of looking for the latest hacks or diet fads, we need to focus on eating the way our bodies were designed to handle food. Eating small meals frequently throughout the day is not only impractical, it would have been unheard of in almost any generation before the 1800/1900s (apart from the upper class who incidentally were often overweight).
For thousands of years humans have been eating one main meal a day, in the evening. Throughout the morning and the busyness of the day they would snack on fresh vegetables and fruits – getting the right minerals and vitamins in their body so that by the time they were ready to eat late at night, their metabolism was at its peak and ready to handle almost any meal size.
Ori Hofmekler is a nutrition expert who has done quite a lot of research in this area. His book The Warrior Diet affirmed to me what I have always believed to be true (yet was too gullible to completely ignore the so-called experts that were telling me the opposite). Humans are nocturnal eaters and as such we should eat sparingly during the day and feast at night.
Don’t forget to build muscle!
The other thing you should know about metabolism is that it is a necessary process in order to rebuild muscle after a workout. That is important if you want to supercharge your weight loss efforts. You see, after a strength training workout your body needs to burn extra calories in order to rebuild and maintain your muscles. This is why weight training is so much more effective than cardio. You only burn calories with cardio when you actually doing the exercise – as soon as you stop, your body stops burning calories. With weights, your body will continue to burn calories long after the workout has finished. Now that’s a bang-for-buck Take Fit fact for you!
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