Suffering From Slow Metabolism ?

People often refer to metabolism as being fast or slow, which means how quickly the body works through the energy conversion process. “We usually see patients coming to us saying, ‘My metabolism is down. My metabolism is slow,’” 

 “That's related to the basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the resting metabolic rate.”

Your metabolism can be affected by several factors:

• Muscle Mass Higher muscle mass translates to a faster metabolism. There’s an opposite relationship between fat and metabolism. “The more fat you carry, the slower your metabolism is generally,” Dr. Spiegel says.
• Age Metabolism naturally slows as you age.
• Sex Men typically have faster metabolisms than women due to higher muscle mass.
• Genetics Your genes determine how much muscle mass your body will have.
• Movement Any type of movement leads to more calories burned than being sedentary.
• Smoking Nicotine stimulates metabolism, leading to more calories burned. That said, the negative health consequences of smoking far outweigh any metabolic benefit.

There are two main aspects to the process of metabolism: anabolism and catabolism.

Anabolism promotes new cell growth and builds body tissue such as muscle, while catabolism is the process by which the body breaks down tissue such as fat, Doctors say.

These aren’t types of metabolism, rather they are related because of the link between metabolism and the weight loss and muscle gain process. “When you lose weight, you are in a catabolic state,” Doctors say. “When you gain muscle or fat or both, you are in an anabolic state.”

Oftentimes, when you hear about metabolism, it’s in conjunction with weight loss. That’s because you’ll probably hear that someone with a slow metabolism needs fewer calories than someone with a fast metabolism. But having a fast metabolism isn’t a characteristic shared by thin people; people who are overweight or obese often have fast metabolisms, per the Cleveland Clinic. In fact, metabolism is rarely the cause of weight loss or gain, since your metabolism naturally adjusts to meet your body’s needs. Burning more calories than you take in results in weight loss, no matter the speed of your metabolism.

However, people with a slow metabolism may have a more difficult time losing weight because they burn fewer calories than those with a fast metabolism, which means that more of the calories they consume get stored as fat in the body, according to Harvard Health Publishing.

You cannot overcome your genetic predisposition, but Physicians says that you can absolutely speed up your metabolism. The best way to do it? By building muscle.

Muscle uses more energy than fat does, even when you’re at rest, according to Rush University Medical Center. “If you increase your muscle mass, you need more calories to feed those muscles so your basal metabolic rate will increase,” 

 “You're burning calories in different ways: You're burning calories when you're doing the exercise, you're burning calories when you're recovering from exercise, and you're burning calories because you increase your metabolic rate.”

He says that there’s no one-size-fits-all recommendation on the best way to build muscle, but there are three ways to do it: increase exercise frequency, increase time spent exercising, or increase intensity.

According to Harvard Health Publishing, you can also speed up your metabolism by eating protein and drinking green tea, although the impact of both of these interventions is small.

All in all, a healthy lifestyle is key to a healthy metabolism.

There are also some things that can slow down your metabolism. One is aging, which of course you can’t prevent, though you can maintain a speedy metabolism with a little work. “As you age, your metabolism may decrease, but there is a very strong relationship with the muscle mass, and this is in our control,”  “Our goal as we age is always preservation of muscle mass so you can maintain or increase your metabolic rate.”

Additionally, your metabolism can slow as a result of certain situations or behaviors:

• Losing Weight When you lose weight, you’re losing fat as well as muscle, and that can slow down your metabolism, according to the Mayo Clinic.
• Quitting Smoking The nicotine in cigarettes has a metabolism-quickening effect and can increase calorie burn by 7 to 15 percent, according to MedlinePlus. So quitting smoking takes away that extra burn, though the potential weight gain is far better than continuing to smoke and increasing your risk of various health issues.
• Skipping Meals It makes the body go into starvation mode and hold onto calories to survive. Breakfast is a particularly important one not to skip. According to a study published January 2021 in Nutrition & Metabolism, which looked at data from more than 21,000 people, the majority of people with abnormal metabolisms regularly skipped breakfast.