Raising your metabolism

The resting metabolism or the amount of calories burned by the body which keeps our heart beating and lungs breathing can be trained to burn more calories. A good way to estimate the resting metabolism is to estimate 10 calories for every pound of body weight for women and 11 for men. A 120-pound woman has a resting metabolic rate of approximately 1,200 calories per day. Liz Applegate, Ph.D., FACSM, director of sports nutrition at the University of California at Davis, believes this can be raised with lifestyle changes, the right nutrition and exercise modifications She believes certain key factors affect the exact metabolic rate for individuals. and these factors if stimulated increase the calories burned and therefore more weight loss. The key is to replace fat cells with muscle. Strength training creates lean muscle mass. Age, hormones influence metabolism and you can change it. The hype about supplements that claim to increase thyroid activity are unproven to help. But you can focus efforts on other factors that impact metabolic rate. Although cutting an extreme amount of calories from your daily diet seems like a way to quickly lose weight it actually slows metabolism. We tell our bodies to conserve when we detoxify or fast. Women should not eat less than 1,200 calories per day, and men should eat no less than 1,800. Slow and small deficits lead to healthy, long-term weight loss. Yet, you can manipulate your metabolism by balancing your diet. Proteins take more calories to digest. Applegate recommends eating 18 to 20 percent of the day's total calories in lean proteins. She also recommends more fiber, which keep you feeling full and may slightly block caloric absorption. No single factor will make a big change in your resting metabolic rate, but practicing several can. "Doing just one of these things might only lead to 60 or so more calories burned per day," she said. "But when you start factoring in several of these modifications, they can really add up and make a difference."

The Weight Debate

Research now supports a theory long debunked by doctors and dietitians. What we eat versus what we expend does not result in the same weight loss for every person. The idea that burning 3,500 calories equals one pound lost no longer rings true. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity expert at Rockefeller University believes that balancing our weight is more difficult that we think.

Mathematically, shouldn't it work out that if I walk 20 minutes a day and burn 100 calories, I will lose a pound in 35 days? Science says no. It is very hard to calculate calorie input and output every day since most calorie guides and portion control techniques are estimates. But as we learn about the brain we see how much control it exerts over appetite and intake as well. There are also hormonal and other physiological mechanisms that keep us from losing weight. When we force out bodies to lose weight nature reacts in an attempt to protect us from it. This desire for stability enables us to skip a meal or fast for a while without losing weight. If we burn an extra 100 calories a day we end up making up for it by eating a little more the next day without even knowing it. We resist weight loss as a protective mechanism and Dr. Friedman believes this system, “operates with 99.6 percent precision.”

What do we do? Well, the first step is to understand that willpower alone can not help you lose weight and keep it off. Secondly since we commonly underestimate what we eat keeping a food journal keeps you honest. Finally, find support. You are not alone in this. The rise in overweight and obese adults in the United States rose to 66%. There is good news, however. Once you lose weight and if you continue to monitor it, your body will relax and stay there for a while.

Weight loss and keeping it off

At this time of year the common resolution I hear is to eat better and lose weight. It makes sense since generally we all have eaten thousands of extra calories and drank many more during the holidays. Holidays bring out the appetite in people and most people gain about 4 pounds from Halloween through New Years Day. What seems to be changing is not that people gain weight during this season but that in our sedentary society it is getting harder and harder to lose the weight we gain. Tara Pope Parker wrote a piece today in the NYTs highlighting great websites offering diet help. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/keeping-that-diet-resolution/
It is worth a read. I am interested in the site called 3Fatchicks.com written by 3 sisters that shares stories of real people's weight loss struggles.

I am also struck by the study in the April 2008 article in the British Journal of Nutrition. They looked at success rates of lifetime Weight Watchers members and found that a year after reaching goal weight, 80 percent of participants maintained only 5 percent of the weight loss. By one year only 27 percent of the dieters were below their goal weight. Despite that most people regained their weight, ww offers more success than most commercial diet plans.

I find the maintenance the key and with this I continue to recommend small weekly, weight loss support groups. They are easy to set up and work.