KEY

3

Master Your Metabolism

Have you ever wished you could own a masterpiece, like an original van Gogh or a Monet? You may think you could never afford such a masterwork, but the truth is, you were born with one. The human body is God’s own masterpiece. Part of what makes it so special is its amazing versatility. You were made to survive in all kinds of situations, which is why your body is so adaptable. If you soak up a lot of sun, your body automatically produces extra pigment in your skin to protect you. If you use your muscles every day, your body starts making those muscles bigger to help you out. What a system!

One way the body constantly adapts is through its metabolism. We hear and use this term often. For example, if we see a woman who is thin and highly energetic, or a man who eats huge amounts of food but never gains weight, we say that person has a high metabolism. People who are less energetic and gain weight easily often say they have a slow metabolism. But what do we really mean by metabolism? And what impact does it have on our weights, our waistlines, and our energy levels?

The Power System for Your Body

Metabolism is simply the process by which your body breaks down, or metabolizes, your food and converts it into energy. All your energy comes from the food you eat (despite what certain pills or supplements may claim); it’s like fuel for your body. You literally burn that food, which powers your body and your brain just as your car burns gasoline to power its movement.

When your metabolism feels sluggish, it means you are creeping along like a car stuck in first gear. You are not burning much food, which means you do not have much energy. You feel down and uninspired, lethargic and slower than the people around you. That’s not a good situation for your body or for your brain.

If your body is not using much energy but you are still filling your “tank” with as much food as usual, you will soon be in trouble. Think of it this way: If you put more gas in your car than you can use, the extra liquid spills out the top of the tank and runs down the side of your car, wasted. But your body is more sophisticated than your car. It has an incredibly flexible system for storing excess. It will store as much as you give it. Millions of special, pliable cells throughout your body swell up with the extra fuel, saving it for later. They are called fat cells.

The body has another survival trick. Not only does it store energy for the future in the form of fat, it also tries to be careful about the rate at which it uses these fat resources. You may run your household in a similar way. If you get a promotion at work and your income increases, you loosen your purse strings a bit. Maybe you redecorate, build an addition, put in a swimming pool, or start taking nicer vacations. On the other hand, if you lose your job or have a reduction in your pay, you immediately cut back on expenses to try to get by as long as possible on your savings. You hold off on new purchases, turn down the heat during the winter, and travel less.

Your body works the same way. If it does not get much food (or water), it assumes hard times are here and does what it can to get you through. It says, “Whoa, let’s slow things down until some good food comes along.” Figuratively speaking, it turns off the lights, turns down the heat, and tries to travel as little as possible. In other words, it slows down your metabolism. And you know what that feels like. You don’t want to move. Your brain is groggy. You feel cold. You do not do much of anything. You just feel down. And you are burning very few calories, which will not help at all if you are trying to lose weight.

Why Diets Backfire

I hope you are beginning to see that unhealthy diets wreck metabolism. Any diet that tries to achieve weight loss by drastically cutting back on the number of calories you eat is doomed because it is based on a misunderstanding of how the human body works. It seems logical enough: Eat less, burn more, lose weight. And yes, that is the path to weight loss. The only way to lose weight is to burn more calories per day than you consume. When that happens, the body liquidates your fat reserves and burns them to make up the extra calories. You literally melt that fat right off of your body!

But as I just explained, your body’s natural instinct is not to keep reviving your metabolism once your food intake goes way down. Not long after you start dieting, it will lower your metabolism to match the new amount of food it receives. This explains the classic dieting dilemma: You go on a diet and have great success the first few weeks. The pounds fall off and you think you’ve got it made. But then, even though you are sticking to the diet, even if it is difficult, suddenly the weight loss stops. You lose a couple of pounds one week, then one the next week, then none.

As this is happening, you can also feel sluggish and depressed, and you may crave “real” food. Soon you start sneaking forbidden foods and slipping off the diet. Then the weight comes back with a vengeance!

This happens because your body is happy to add an extra pound of fat but reluctant to give one up. Pounds go on easier than they come off. When your metabolism is slow and you are not doing much, you tend to lose muscle. The more you work a muscle, the bigger it gets, and the less you use it, the more it shrinks. Muscle looks great; it stays firm and flexes when you move, as opposed to fat, which has no shape and simply jiggles. More important, muscle burns calories all the time, just keeping itself ready for action. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even when sleeping. This is called your resting metabolism, and it’s different for every person.

Eventually, if you keep eating healthy foods regularly, your body catches up and starts increasing your metabolism. Most health experts recommend eating six small meals per day or forming the habit of eating something every two and a half to three hours. The six meals should be three meals and three snacks. Believe it or not this keeps the metabolism working and your body begins to burn calories at a faster rate. Keep in mind that the meals need to be healthy foods. Lots of vegetables and good protein as well as good fat can be a guideline. Fruit is also good, but lean toward more vegetables than fruit.

Dieting excessively and not taking in enough fuel may cause you to lose fat, but it also causes loss of muscle. You could even weigh the same as you did before dieting because muscle weighs more than fat, but you will look worse—because you have replaced firm muscle with fat—and you will burn fewer calories each day because you have less muscle and a lower resting metabolism. So you will find it more difficult than ever to maintain your weight. For all these reasons, dieting is not the way to reach or maintain a healthy weight.

The good news is that you can do plenty of things to fix this situation. The key is to eat a normal, balanced diet and to engage in activities that keep your metabolism purring along at an energetic clip. Do this and you will gradually shed excess pounds until you reach a healthy weight. Remember, the goal is not just to be thin, but to be healthy and weigh what is right for you. When we lose weight properly it will take longer, but the weight is more likely to stay off than if we lose it quickly on an unhealthy or fad diet of some kind.

Five Ways to Boost Metabolism

1. Exercise
The most popular and most effective way to burn calories is to move. Your body assumes that if you move fast every day, you have a good reason; it must be key to your survival. So it raises metabolism, builds more muscle, and gives you the enzymes you need to burn calories more easily. The more regularly you exercise, the higher you keep your metabolism and the more effortlessly those pounds will melt away. A fringe benefit of this is that you stay alert and happy more of the time.

2. Eat Breakfast (and Lunch and Dinner)
Most of us have heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and that’s true. Think about it: You fasted for hours while you slept. Your metabolism naturally slows down overnight, so breakfast is your body’s signal to kick-start itself. A good breakfast gets all of your physical machinery working again—your digestion, brainpower, senses, muscles, and other systems. Because a good breakfast makes you so much more active, it can actually help you lose weight. Some people skip breakfast because they think that means they are eating less and therefore will lose weight. But failing to eat breakfast puts you in a state of lethargy; you creep through your morning, not accomplishing much of anything—including burning calories.

If you are a person who does not like the thought of eating anything in the morning or does not enjoy traditional breakfast foods, realize that breakfast does not have to be a big meal; even a little something will help get your metabolism going. But it cannot be just any “something.” For example, eating sugary cereals is worse than eating nothing at all. Eating big loads of sugar or starch throws your system out of whack, makes you sleepy, and leads to numerous diseases. Make sure you get some protein at breakfast; try combining that with a little fat (which keeps you fuller longer) and with fruits or vegetables for vitamins and fiber. Here are some good breakfast choices:

Eggs of any kind

Yogurt, fruit, and nuts

Peanut butter and whole-grain toast

Lean meat (not fatty bacon or sausage)

Whole-grain pancakes, waffles, or muffins

Whole-grain cereal with fruit

Whole-grain toast with cheese

Just as overlooking breakfast is not good for your health, skipping lunch or dinner is not a good idea either. Most people’s bodies work best when they have regular amounts of food throughout the day. Generally speaking, we do not burn many calories after dinner, so a big dinner does little except convert to fat. Try eating a substantial breakfast and making dinner the lightest of the three meals of your day—and see how that improves your weight and your waistline.

3. Drink Water
I will address the importance of water in Key 6, but because it is so important to your metabolism, I want to make some basic observations about it here. Water is responsible for getting nutrients from your food to your muscles and your brain via blood, which is mostly composed of water. Your body uses water to do almost everything—to deliver nutrients to your cells, to cool yourself when you are hot, to flush waste, and to circulate immune cells through your body. Without enough water, all these systems start to suffer, and so does your metabolism. As you begin to dehydrate, you get sluggish because water is not there to transfer fuel to your muscles and brain. If you want to keep your metabolism at a high level, giving your body enough water every day is essential.

4. Sleep Well
Some people view sleep simply as “down time,” but it is so much more than that. Your conscious mind may be down, but lots of other parts of your body are hard at work performing vital maintenance tasks. As you sleep, your brain discharges the day’s stress, your body repairs injuries, and your blood restocks your muscles with fuel for the coming day. Skip this vital part of a twenty-four-hour cycle and you will drag through the day with little energy, lowered metabolism, and poor performance on everything from tests or job reports to reaction time. In addition, lack of sleep will make you short tempered and cranky.

People tend to eat more when they are sleep deprived because they feel colder and less energetic, and they mistake these feelings for hunger. Get a decent night’s rest and you will eat better, burn more calories overall, and have a better attitude and disposition.

5. Fidget
Research at the Mayo Clinic found that one major difference between overweight people and slender people may be how much they fidget. In other words, it isn’t just planned exercise, such as workouts in the gym or walks in the park, but hundreds of tiny movements throughout the day that make the difference. The researchers found that all those little motions—getting up to look out a window, stretching, scratching your head, even shifting to the other side of the sofa to watch television—have a much bigger impact on health than anyone thought. People considered “skinny” fidgeted away 350 more calories a day than people who were overweight. That adds up to 35 pounds per year!

Starting today, take some steps to make your life a little bit more active by adding some intentional “fidgets.”

Take the stairs instead of the elevator.

Walk as much as possible throughout your day. For example, don’t park close to the entrance of the place you are going. Park so you will have to walk a bit.

When you think of something you need to do, get up and do it. Don’t procrastinate.

Choose activities that force you to move, such as gardening, dance classes, sweeping a porch or patio, or walking in the mall.

When you watch TV, get up and stretch periodically. Do the same at work.

Try putting your TV in front of a treadmill or exercise machine so you can exercise while you watch it.

Keep weights or exercise balls in your office and take a few minutes to use them throughout the day.

Act on It

Which of the five actions in this key will you take in order to master your metabolism as you move toward greater health? Write them down, commit to them, and start today.