Metabolism is the process by which your body converts food into energy. Many people hold the belief that fat people have low metabolism rates and skinny people have high metabolism rates. However, the process is not that simple.

Your metabolism depends on three separate factors, and how it works affects how much you weigh. Metabolism is determined by the amount of calories you consume, factors such as age and sex, and how physically active you are.

If you consume excessive calories, you will eventually gain weight. Each human body is designed to run on a certain calorie amount. This can vary from person to person, but is between 1500 and 2500 calories for most adults. If you are trying to lose weight, it will be less.

Men generally need more calories per day than women, unless the woman is pregnant or breastfeeding. The rate at which your body burns these calories is your metabolism; if you burn them more slowly, youll gain weight. If you burn through extra calories quickly, youll maintain your weight.

Factors such as age, body composition, and sex also determine metabolism. If your body contains more muscle, your metabolism will be faster. If it contains more fat, your body will be slower.

For this reason, women’s metabolism often slows down after pregnancy. Excess fat is accumulated and stored on the hips and breasts. After pregnancy, it can be harder to lose this weight. Age also affects your metabolism; as you age, your metabolism slows down. This can lead to “middle age spread” if you don’t take action to burn those extra calories and kick your metabolism into high gear.

Your rate of physical activity greatly affects your metabolism. This is good news; it means you have some control over the situation! If your metabolism is slowing down due to age, gender, or other factors, you can boost it by exercising. The key to weight loss is burning more calories than you take in.

When you choose to exercise regularly and eat a healthy diet, weight loss is possible. Your metabolism will increase as you add muscle to your body remember; muscle burns more calories than fat!

To jump-start your metabolism, you may need to lower the amount of calories you’re consuming daily and up the amount of exercise you are doing. Choose aerobic and weight lifting exercises for maximum impact. Aerobic exercise burns fat, and weight training will add muscle. Both can greatly increase your metabolism, leading to healthy fat loss.

This article isn’t medical advice nor should it be interpreted or substituted as medical advice. This article is for informational purposes only. Prior to making changes to your physical exercise routine and your diet, you should always consult your personal physician. It is much better to be safe than sorry.

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Youve dieted, youve exercised, and you feel like no matter what you do you can t lose weight. Many people say that no matter what theyve tried they cant seem to drop any of their unwanted pounds. Though the problem is the same, the reasons for having so much difficulty losing weight usually vary from person to person. Just like the same way of eating might not work as well for some people as it does for others, the problems associated with weight loss are bound to be different for many different people, too.

If youve been following a diet plan and still can t lose weight, you need to look very carefully at the diet and see if its really one that can work. Youll need to look at things like how many calories you eat a day on the plan, and whether your diet seems to be heavier in things like fat or dairy products, or whether it leans the other way and focuses mostly on fruits and vegetables.

If the amount of calories youre eating every day seems reasonableenough to keep you healthy but low enough to let you burn fatyet you can t lose weight while eating this way, its likely that the type of diet just doesnt suit your metabolism. If the diet is calorie-focused and allows things like white bread, flour, potatoes, pasta and sugar, trying cutting down on those items. Maybe the diet is too high in carbohydrates for you and thats sabotaging your efforts. Experiment to see if you start losing weight.

If the diet is already low carb and you can t lose weight on it, then maybe its gone too far in the other direction. Are you eating lots of red meat, fried foods, oil and other fats like butter? Some low-carb diets claim you can eat these foods in almost unlimited amounts, but thats simply not true. All that fat adds up to hundreds of calories, and no matter how few carbs you eat, a calorie is still a calorie. It can be very easy to eat too many calories per day if youre eating fatty meats, nuts or if you have lots of oil in your diet.

If your diet really seems healthy, with lean meats, lots of vitamin-rich fruits and vegetables, some diary and little sugar or flour and you still can t lose weight, then you could be eating too few calories and causing your metabolism to slow. Or youre eating much more food than you think you are. Look at all the little snacks you have throughout the day, no matter how healthy they are.

Try keeping a journal and writing down everything you eat each day, including anything you drink that has calories in it like soda or coffee with cream. If you can t lose weight because youre eating more than you think, a week or so of logging the details of your diet should start to show you where those extra calories are sneaking in.

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The question of the best way to lose weight varies from person to person. That’s because everybody is different, and what works for somebody else, may not be all that effective for you. However, it’s all about calories. If two people burn more calories than they take in, following reasonable guidelines, they should both lose weight; it’s just that they probably won’t lose the same amount, or lose it at the same rate.

Then there is also the fact that people already have their own habits, attitudes and level of health. This will make how you respond to a particular diet different from the way others may respond. It will also determine, to a large extent, how well you stick to the details of whichever diet you choose as your best way to lose weight.

You need to look at any diet carefully before you decide to try it. A lot of diets rely on a gimmick of some kind or another to hook people in. A gimmick is there for two reasons. First, it’s an attempt to make it unique; to suggest that it’s something you haven’t tried before, but could really work…this time. Second, gimmicks are designed to hide the boring truth about weight loss. That truth is that the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in. But let’s face it, a diet that just said that wouldn’t sell, regardless of how effective it was.

Okay, there are a lot of fad diets out there, but there are also a lot of diets based on sound nutrition, too. Those are the diets you should be choosing from. Look into them to see if they let you eat a wide variety of foods, as that’s always a sure sign of a healthy diet. Some diets work by severely reducing certain foods; the low-carb diets, for example. And it’s true that you could lose weight by following them, but weight is only one small part of the bigger health picture. While the idea of eating all the meat and fat you like may sound appealing, the risk of clogged arteries, high cholesterol and heart disease are not appealing.

When you are comparing diet plans, you also need to be realistic. You know what foods you like, which ones you can tolerate, and which ones you don’t like at all. If the diet is heavy on the foods you don’t like, then it’s probably a good idea to move on to one that you’ll be able to stick to. In other words, don’t let the promises of a diet plan convince you that you will somehow start liking foods you can’t stand.

Instead, find a diet that focuses on the foods you love. There is a wide variety of diet plans, so you can be sure there is one that is the best way to lose weight for you. It may take a bit of searching, or you may get lucky and find one right away. Either way, take advantage of it as soon as you find it…once you start seeing positive results, you’ll be glad you did.

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