Your metabolic rate is the rate at which you burn energy (calories) and is directly related to the amount of lean muscle mass you have on your body. Muscle requires a lot more energy than fat and therefore burns up food quicker. Look at top athletes or young adolescent boys, they have much more lean muscle mass than body fat and therefore find it difficult to gain weight and are practically always hungry! Your metabolism is similar to a fire, for a fire to burn brightly and for heat to be generated you need to fuel it with logs and coal etc. When you leave the fire alone and don’t add fuel, the flames die down; in order to get them back again you must add more coal.
Our bodies need energy aka ‘food’ to work properly. Just like a car needs petrol. When we don’t fuel our body the correct amount and type of food, it thinks there is something wrong and it switches into “famine mode” where death is a real threat and it will conserve energy. In order to keep your metabolic rate high and working efficiently, you need to eat regular meals containing all the calories your body requires to do the work it has to do, i.e., staying alive, walking, thinking, working, breathing, laughing etc. Muscle require a lot more energy than fat so by increasing your lean muscle mass you will increase your metabolic rate.
Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the least amount of calories you need, every day, for all of your organs and bodily processes to function efficiently. There are so many variables to consider when calculating ones BMR that it is nearly impossible to pinpoint it exactly but a general rule of thumb is to take your weight in pounds and add a 0. So if you are 10 stone, you are 140lbs and have a BMR of 1400kCals. You need this amount of calories just to lie in bed, alive. Now, most of us will want to do more than just lie in bed all day, we have daily tasks and activities that will require more energy to complete. It is a fair estimate to add half of your BMR to give you the total amount of calories you need every day. In this case, 2100 kCals. If you are very active you can add a few hundred more.
Emma Buckley B.Sc
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