Making Your Metabolism Work for You

For some people who really struggle with weight loss, one of the best things to do is to focus on raising your metabolism. We all have a set metabolic rate, this is the rate at which our body naturally burns calories without us doing anything (often referred to as "BMR" [Basal Metabolic Rate]). If you have an active metabolism, a struggle for you may be to keep weight on. However, I don't train too many women who have this "problem". High BMRs are usually seen with men. Women most often look to lose weight and sometimes struggle to see results. If you are uncertain about your need to increase your metabolism to help you lose weight (more specifically body fat), here are some ways to be sure this is what you need to do:

1) No matter how much you exercise, the scale doesn't move
2) Regardless of how little you eat, you don't lose weight
3) After monitoring your calories and exercise for 3-4 weeks, you notice that you need to bring your caloric intake to a very low level (1000 calories or below) to start to see weight loss

If these conditions sound too familiar to you, then focusing on raising your metabolism may be the best option for you on your weight loss journey.

"So, How Do I Do It?"

If you took note of what I stated in the first paragraph that most men typically have higher metabolisms than women, there is a good reason for that. One of the biggest physical differences between men and women is the amount of muscle that is on our bodies. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate. Your BMR and your muscle are directly linked to each other. The more muscle you have, the more you need to eat to keep that muscle on your body. Muscle will burn up stored body fat to keep itself on your body. One of the best aspects about muscle is that it only takes up about 1/4 of the space that fat does. So, if you focused on building muscle, you wouldn't necessarily become "huge" (like most women are afraid of), your body circumferences would actually decrease. For example, if there were 2 women standing side by side who both had identical heights and they both weighed 150lbs each, but one had a body fat percentage of 30% and the other had a BF% of 15%, the lady with 15% body fat would be noticeably "skinnier". Her clothes would all be significantly smaller and she would look like she weighed about 15-20lbs lighter than the other lady who had a BF% of 30%. In some ways, that is true. The woman who has a BF% of 30% has 22lbs more body fat than the woman who has a BF% of only 15%. Most people who have a goal of "weight loss" really have a goal of losing body fat.

So, in order to gain muscle, you need to focus on the activities and diet plans that would be helpful in gaining lean weight. This involves a good weight training plan coupled with a diet rich in protein and adequate calories. Now, for you women who are telling yourself "I really don't want to bulk up and look like a guy", don't worry. It is so difficult for a woman to end up looking like a guy, that even if you tried hard, you would still need to take steroids in order to come close. God made us different and weight training will not change that! :)

If you are currently not following a weight training plan, I would recommend following a plan that involves 3 days of weight training (maybe Mon, Wed, Fri) splitting upper body and lower body muscle groups to allow adequate time to recover from your workouts.
If you have already been following an upper/lower body split for some time, consider splitting the body parts up even more to push/pull muscle groups. This means couple body parts that help you "push" like chest muscles with shoulders and triceps muscles (the back of your arms). "Pull" muscle groups will be back and biceps (top of your arms). Then you may want to have a separate day for legs. I would recommend having 4 days each week to weight train and rotate the 3 workouts. For example, if you wanted to workout on Mon, Tue, Thur and Fri. Your schedule might look like Mon-Push muscles, Tue-Legs, Thur-Pull muscles, Fri-Push muscles and the following week Mon would start with Legs. This would allow your body plenty of recovery time between workouts. If you are interested in what types of exercises to consider, please refer to the blog I posted a few weeks back "Resistance Training for Women."

In regards to what your diet should look like, you want to make sure that you are meeting your body's needs calorically and giving your body extra protein to use for muscle building. Your body is going to have a very hard time building muscle if you are keeping it in a calorie deficient state. So, "meeting your needs" will be determining what your BMR is and then adding an estimated activity load. For example, if you know that your BMR is roughly 1400 calories (this is typical for a woman who is average height, age 40 and about 150lbs). You would then want to add enough calories to cover all of the activity that you do. For example, if you do weight training 3 days each week plus 3-5 days of cardiovascular exercise, you may want to add approx 300 calories for the cardio that you do and an additional 200 for the weight training. This would bring your calories to approximately 1900 calories each day. In addition to these amount of calories, you should try to consume approximately 1gram of protein/lb of body weight. This will give your body more than enough protein to help develop muscle and also give you a little extra. The little extra will actually help burn more calories than consuming other foods, because protein has a high "thermic effect" which means it burns up a lot of calories as you consume it. Make sure to drink plenty of water with this plan to help get rid of built up protein (10-12 cups should do). By eating this much, your weight should stay roughly the same, but if you continue to do the exercises as we discussed, your body fat should decrease.

In some ways, it may appear that you have to take a couple steps backwards to go forwards. However, your body will thank you. Many people who have struggled with weight loss for years may have been doing more damage than good with their weight loss efforts. As you continue to restrict calories, you increase the likelihood of burning off muscle. When you burn off muscle, you lower your metabolic rate. Then, when you begin to eat what you normally did before you started to diet, your body stores even more bodyfat than it did before. This is the dieting "yo-yo effect". It's much better to destroy the yo-yo with weight training and muscle growth! Use your metabolism to your advantage instead of trying to work against it. By doing the activities that help your muscles grow, you can really start to decrease body fat.

If you are interested in finding out how many calories and grams of protein that you need to follow this program, please let me know.

"From whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love." Ephesians 4:16 (New American Standard Bible)