The Truth About Weight Loss and Metabolism

The connection between weight loss and metabolism is complicated. You can’t separate one from the other. But there’s also no magic secret to speeding everything up to reach your goals faster. So what’s the truth between that weight loss and metabolism relationship, and what, if anything, can you do to level it up?

If you’ve ever glanced at the cover of a fitness magazine (or let’s be real: completely nosed dived in), while waiting in the check out line at the grocery store, you might be under the impression that your metabolism is something that you can control with a shot of apple cider vinegar or a hard core HIIT workout. For better or worse, that’s not how it works. We have a tendency to use a “slow” metabolism as an excuse as to why we aren’t losing weight. Truth bomb: turns out that’s just not the case.

Your Metabolism Explained

Definition of metabolism according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary: the sum of the processes in the buildup and destruction of protoplasm; specifically : the chemical changes in living cells by which energy is provided for vital processes and activities and new material is assimilated.

Get it? Got it? No?

Try this…

“Metabolism” refers to all of the chemical processes that happen at a cellular level that turn calories from the food you eat into energy so that you can survive. Your behaviors, genetics and environment influence your metabolism but not in the ways or magnitude that most of us have come to believe.

There are three main ways your body uses calories:

Resting Metabolic Rate

The RMR accounts for roughly 60-70% of the total calories your body burns each day. As you read this article your brain is processing the information. That requires energy. At the same time, you are digesting breakfast, recovering from yesterday’s workout, breathing and regulating your the temperature of your body as you enjoy a cool breeze.

Your specific RMR depends on a few factors:

1. Lean body tissue vs. fat tissue. A large vehicle requires more fuel to move than a smaller vehicle. A larger human requires more energy to sustain the same basic functions of life than a smaller human requires. That’s part of the reason my 6’2″ husband needs more calories throughout the day than I do at 5’4″. But there’s more to it!
   
   The more lean body tissue you have the more energy your body needs to maintain the status quo. Everything from skeletal muscle, to your brain, to your skin, to your blood counts as fat-free mass. But skeletal muscle tissue is the one thing in that list that you can control. The more muscle you have in comparison to fat, the higher your RMR. That’s because muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat tissue.
   
   You can use this RMR calculator to get an idea of what your RMR is.
   
2. Gender. On average, females tend to have a slower metabolic rate than men by about 3%. That’s partially because females tend to be smaller in stature. It’s also because women tend to have less muscle mass than men. Again – these are generalizations so don’t take that 3% and set it in stone.
   
   Keep in mind too that as a woman, your menstrual cycle plays a role in your metabolic rate. Did you know that your metabolic rate decreases during menstruation, and is at it’s highest during the luteal phase?
   
3. Age. After the age of 20, the metabolic rate decreases by 1-2% per decade. Again, this is mostly due to the fact that as humans age they tend to lose fat free mass and replace it with fat mass. A decrease in activity and changes in hormone levels play a role here.

Thermic Effect of Food

The thermic effect of food or TEF, is the energy required to digest, absorb and store the food you eat. It makes up about 10% of your metabolic burn. The calories contained in protein, carbohydrates and fats need to be broken down into usable molecules. That takes work. And it takes more or less work depending on what you eat.

A calorie is not a calorie. At lab level sure, a calorie is a unit of measurement that is the same across the board. But you don’t live in a lab which means that other factors come in to play. Because of it’s molecular make up, protein is the hardest macronutrient for your body to digest. This, along with the fact that protein is the building block of muscle, is why athletes and fitness enthusiasts adhere to higher protein diets.

*It is, of course, more complicated than that. There are plenty of factors that affect the way your body breaks down food: gut health, macronutrient combinations, workout/meal timing, health conditions, cooking method, processing method. But understanding the science behind hitting protein goals is a good way to stay motivated.

Activity Energy Expenditure

This is the piece of the metabolic puzzle that you have the most control over: energy expenditure. AEE can account from anywhere between 10-30% of your metabolic rate and that’s entirely dependent on what you do (or don’t do). There are two pieces to the AEE puzzle:

1. Physical Activity. This is any conscious, intentional exercise that you do. Obviously, depending on what kind of exercise you do, at what intensity, for how long and a number of other factors – the amount of energy you expend varies. *Most people over-estimate the calories they burn during PA.
   
2. NEAT. This is all of the calories you burn through activity outside of your workouts. This number varies widely depending on how active your lifestyle is. Everything from walking, to cleaning, to fidgeting burns calories – and it adds up! NEAT is why you see articles like this one, and this one, encouraging you to take the stairs instead of the elevator, get up and stretch every couple of hours at work, and take a 10 minute walk in the morning.

The REAL Reason You’re Not Losing Weight

Your body is magical, but it can’t defy nature. It cannot create something out of nothing. Which means that the only way that your body will store fat is if you are consuming more calories than you are burning. If you think that you are in a caloric deficit but you aren’t losing fat, you aren’t in a caloric deficit. *Keep in mind that doesn’t mean you should automatically reduce calories! Read on.

Now that you have a greater understanding of what metabolism and that “burn” actually is, let’s turn our attention to the areas where most people get off track.

You Underestimate How Much You Actually Eat

If you have a serious goal to lose fat and you don’t currently keep a food journal or track your calories and macros, it’s time to start tracking. Seriously, you don’t know what you don’t know and if you don’t know, you can’t make smart decisions to get you closer to your goal.

Food tracking is the nutrition tool that keeps on giving.

• Food journals give you an accurate look at how much you are consuming. Does it require your time? Yes. Will you need to measure your portions? At least to start with, yes. Will you be surprised when you find you’re eating/snacking/drinking more calories than you thought? Probably, yes.
  
• You’ll get an idea of what you are eating, and what you are not. Most of my clients are wildly surprised to find out that they are no where close to hitting their protein goals and waaaaayyy overdoing it when it comes to carbs and fats.
  
• Tracking meals and keeping a food log gives you data. You’ll find patterns in your eating habits that once identified, can be disrupted. Most of what “leads us stray” nutritionally is actually habit – we routinely fall off track over the same events/emotions/cravings but we don’t realize it because we aren’t paying enough attention.

Diet Consistency: The Key to Your Fitness Goals

Most people are surprisingly terrible at accurately estimating portion sizes! Under-estimating isn’t a problem when you’re talking about, say, berries. 1 cup vs. 1 1/2 cups isn’t going to break the caloric bank, so to speak. But how about 1 tablespoon of peanut butter? Or cooking with 1 tablespoon of olive oil? Underestimating those types of measurements multiple times a day adds up to hundred of unaccounted-for calories.

You Overestimate How Many Calories You Actually Burn

After a 30 minute sweat session on the treadmill you look down to check how many calories you torched. 300 calories! Score. Except that treadmill didn’t ask you anything about yourself before it made the claim that you burned off lunch already. Maybe you put in your age. Maybe you even entered your weight. Shoot, maybe the heart rate monitor actually functioned properly when you squeezed the handles while sprinting forward full tilt (not dangerous at all). But how about your gender? Your current fitness level? Your history of running?

Reality check: the calorie counters on your average gym machines suck. In fact, your estimated calorie burn might be off as much as 42%!

Overestimating caloric burn during exercise wouldn’t be such a big deal if the majority of people didn’t then “reward” themselves by eating more post-workout.

On top of all of that, comparing the absolute caloric burn during a 60 minute run vs. the absolute caloric burn during 60 minutes of heavy lifting might lead one to believe that cardio is the better fat loss exercise. Really? Resistance training is the long-term best bet for weight loss! Why? We’re back to muscle tissue and metabolic rate babe!

You Think Your Workout Makes Up For Your Lack of Movement the Rest of the Day

There are 86,400 seconds in a day. If you spend 3,600 of those seconds working out as hard as you can, that still leaves you with 82,800 seconds to account for. Some of that is, very necessarily, spent sleeping (hardcore recovery). But what about the rest of it?

You control NEAT and you can make a change today, now, in this moment.

Julia Goss

It’s no surprise that most of us don’t hold jobs that require intense amounts of manual labor. We spend a lot of time on our butts: at the desk, in the car, on the train. *Did you know that simply standing instead of sitting burns upwards of 40-140 calories more per hour than sitting?!

There is a giant fluctuation in how much AEE can contribute to your metabolism. I’m here to tell you that NEAT is why. And here’s the kicker: you control NEAT and you can make a change today, now, in this moment. Start moving more – albeit in small ways – and you could end up burning an extra 300 calories a day!

10 Ways to Burn an Extra 100 Calories Today

• Stand at your desk instead of sit.
• Go for a 30 minute walk on your lunch break.
• Play with the dog.
• Spend 30 minutes cleaning the house.
• Go grocery shopping instead of ordering online.
• Jump rope for 10 minutes.
• Dance.
• Take care of your garden.
• Play frisbee.
• Have sex (you’re welcome).

The Metabolic Point

The point of all of this?

1. Focus on what you can control.
2. Forget the industry gimmicks designed to make you buy.
3. Hold yourself accountable.

At the end of the day it all comes down to awareness.

If you don’t know how many calories you consume on a daily basis – or where those calories are coming from – start tracking and find out. If you hesitate to track because you are nervous about what you might find then babe, you already know. Don’t beat yourself up! Simply get started and know that each step you take is a step towards taking control of your health.

And move more. If you can’t fit in a 60 minute workout, go for a 10 minute walk. If you already hit the elliptical machine 4 times a week, swap out 2 cardio workouts for strength training sessions. Your starting point is today. Get to work!