Revving Your Metabolism

Boasting your metabolism is a catchy phrase to sell products and magazines, but stimulating your metabolism is more about triggering your body to breakdown stored body fat for energy, instead of carbohydrates and proteins. Unfortunately most people struggling with weight gain, fatigue, cravings, mood swings, etc., are usually breaking down carbs and lean muscle (proteins), Instead of FATS!

You Burn Calories for One Reason – To Produce Energy. 

Think of your metabolism and how it burns fats, carbs and proteins and the similarities of how your fireplace functions at burning twigs, small branches and big logs to keep your house warm.  They operate very much the same way, in that when you burn Fats (big logs) you produce a lot more heat (energy) than you do when you burn carbohydrates (twigs) and proteins (small branches). 

Let’s not forget the goal of a fireplace is to keep the house or room warm and the smartest way to do that is to constantly burn the big logs (fats).  The same is true with regards to your body producing energy. 

Your metabolism derives more energy by burning Fats, unfortunately for a lot of people who struggle with weight gain, fatigue and lack of energy, cravings, mood swings and the list goes on – has a lot to do with their metabolism burning carbohydrates and lean muscle, instead of fats.  So it’s not that their metabolism has slowed and needs to be revved, rather it has to do with their metabolism shifting and burning more of the Wrong Fuel Source.

Test your Metabolism, click to test

Those who struggle with all those symptoms are usually burning carbs and proteins more so than fats…..this is why they may cut their diet, eat less calories or fats, exercise regularly and still find that they can not lose the weight.…it has more to do with their metabolism burning proteins (lean muscle) and carbs – NOT Stored Body Fats.

You can create a lot of heat (burn a lot of calories) by constantly burning small branches and twigs, but how far will that get you in your goal of losing the unwanted fat around your body.  Remember, losing weight is not the same as losing fat.  This is because some people are initially happy losing weight, unfortunately for a lot of them, they lost lean muscle, which is why their weight went down.  They didn’t really tackle the problem of getting rid of the extra layer of fat around their body.  So a good weight loss program, will tap into your metabolism and its ability in burning fats, NOT just Calories, that may come from the breakdown of carbohydrates and proteins.   

The human body produces more than two and a half times more energy (ATP is the unit of measurement or currency your body uses) when it breaks down fats than it does protein or carbs. The key is understanding that various hormones trigger whether or not your body will burn carbs, proteins or fats.

Losing weight is not simply about burning more calories than you consume…it’s not a simple math equation. Yes, the amount of calories has something to do with it, but it is more about triggering the various hormones that regulate whether you burn fats, carbs or proteins.

Years ago, Dr. Atkins realized that carbohydrates or meals predominately made up of carbs triggered more insulin than glucagon.

Insulin causes your body to store fat, while glucagon triggers your body to burn fat.  Because of that simple understand of how our metabolism is controlled, it is easy to see why so many people have been able to not only lose weight and unwanted inches by eating more protein, instead of carbohydrates.  They have also increased their energy level.

In my opinion, the part of the weight lose equation that Dr. Aktins left off was that stress in another piece of the whole weight loss puzzle.  And that stress triggers a greater production of cortisol and adrenaline.  Two hormones that readily tell your body to burn carbs and proteins, for energy – NOT Fat!  That being said or understood, even the best workouts and diets can be halted if you are constantly having cortisol and adrenaline pumping through your body.

What I am trying to say is, don’t believe all the marketing gimmick of revving your metabolism with this or that product.  The goal or success of true weight loss and getting your body to burn off those unwanted inches comes about by triggering your metabolism to burn FATS for Energy, instead of carbohydrates and lean muscle. Most of what I discussed here can be found in “To Burn or Not to Burn – Fat is the Question.”

FYI…Burst Training, Interval, High Intensity Training are great ways of increasing testosterone and growth hormones, which have great positive effects on your metabolism, but needs to be done with some guidance, because any type of high intensity workout will also cause an increase of cortisol and adrenaline, which could work against some of your weight loss efforts, if not done correctly.