WHAT THE HECK IS METABOLISM?

WHAT THE HECK IS METABOLISM?  Picture Pulled from the Internet
Metabolism, whether the word or process, can be defined in two simple statements.

First, it is the chemical process occurring within your body for the maintenance of life, yielding energy and forming substances necessary to life, such as blood, bone, muscle, fat, and so on.  Second, it is the processing of specific substances, such as fat metabolism, iodine metabolism, and many others. 

While both of these views relate to what we are talking about, the first statement is the important one for you at this moment. 

YOUR METABOLISM is how YOUR BODY goes about extracting energy from food, building and repairing tissue and organs, and how efficiently it performs this process.  That last part about efficiency is a key point in weight loss and weight gain.

HOW IS METABOLISM RELATED TO WEIGHT LOSS...AND EVEN WEIGHT GAIN?

At various times in your life, your metabolism will work in different ways.  Many of us can certainly remember the days when we could eat anything we wanted and never gain a pound...a large pizza, three sodas with sugar, and some cinnamon sticks, and absolutely no change!

In the younger years of life, your metabolism is in the higher gears, probably the highest gears it will ever be in.  For most of us in these years, weight gain and weight loss are not really issues of major concern.  Some people, however, do have slower metabolic rates than others at any age, and may have genetic tendencies or clinical conditions which cause them to have more of a weight gain than others of their age group. 

No matter which group you find yourself in, changing your metabolic rate, revving up your metabolism, if you will, will increase the speed and efficiency with which your body turns food into energy and body "parts and pieces".

Unfortunately, as you may have long suspected, as you age, your metabolism slows down. 

Part of this, the slowing down of metabolism,  is simply something the body does with age.  Part of it, also somewhat related to age, at least indirectly, is the affect of changes which take place in your way of life as you age.  Fortunately, both are somewhat reversible, essentially through the same process.  More on this in the last section.  The part where your body just slows down has to do with "resting metabolism", and the other part...well, let's just call that "rusting metabolism".