Your Metabolism And Weight Loss
If you are one of those people that has been trying to lose weight and get into shape, you have probably heard words such as, "I just eat one meal a day to lose weight" or "I'm afraid if I eat,I'll gain weight" but sadly, this confusion is why so many people are in the "battle of the bulge". People all over the world still believe that eating breakfast, or even three meals a day will cause them to gain weight.
In truth, as long as you are eating the right types of foods and exercising, then three normal meals or six small meals a day will actually work better with their metabolism than eating the wrong quantities or not eating often enough. With more than half of Americans over the age of 20 now are being considered "overweight", now more
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For that to happen, the amount of calories burned needs to exceed the number of calories being consumed, no matter what the nutritional components content are.
Metabolism is the rate at which the body uses energy to support the basic functions essential to sustain life. This metabolism is comprised of three parts,which include physical activity (20%), Thermic Effect of Food, also called TEF (10%), and Resting Metabolism Rate or REM (70%).
Physical activity is the amount of energy your body burns up during normal, daily activities to include housework, recreation, work, exercise, and so on. Obviously, someone that is physically active will burn more energy than a sedentary person will.
TEF accounts for the energy used in digesting and absorbing nutrients, which would vary depending on the meal's composition.
When a person overeats, TEF is increased because more food must be digested. Here is where metabolism becomes very interesting and what causes so much confusion.
One pound is equal to 3,500 calories, so let us say a person consumes 3,500 more
When something gives us energy, it means more than to just give us the required power to work or move along for such a specific task. In biological terms, it means to have your energy be transported through your body and placed by cells into biomolecules. Biomolecules such as lipids and carbohydrates. It then stores that energy in our body.
Animal metabolism consists of the utilization of nutrients absorbed from the digestive tract and their catabolism as fuel for energy or their conversion into substances of the body. Metabolism is a continuous process because the molecules and even most cells of the body have brief lifetimes and are constantly replaced, while tissue as a whole maintains its characteristic structure. This constant rebuilding process without a net change in the amount of a cell constituent is known as dynamic equilibrium (Grolier1996). In the combustion of food, oxygen is used and carbon dioxide is given off. The rate of oxygen consumption indicates the energy expenditure of an organism, or its metabolic rate (Grolier1996).
Energy comes from all the foods and drinks you eat. Things like carbohydrates, proteins and fats are mainly the macro-nutrients.
I have enough exercise from doing yoga and hiking every weekend with my family. Any time I’m free, I try to do something active that will benefit my physical health. Although I maintain my physical health pretty well, I have a difficult time to eat 3 balanced meals everyday. For example, I skip lunch almost everyday on school days because I have a lot of meetings to attend and don’t have the time to eat. Also, I skip breakfast if I wake up late and need to get to school. I need to work on eating meals everyday to satisfy my hunger even though I have no time to. It’s difficult to stay active when I don’t eat enough meals
Eating five or six smaller meals a day, rather than three large meals, is said to increase your metabolism. An increase in metabolism should help you burn calories when you are exercising. A small meal may be a bowl of whole-wheat cereal with one percent milk for breakfast. For a mid morning meal, you could have a cup of cottage cheese. Your whole day continues like this, with small, yet healthy meals.
Contrary to what many believe, a diet is only a temporary way to lose weight and not some dramatic change of lifestyle that automatically gets someone positive results like it claims to do. A study by UCLA researchers has shown that dieting does not work. In fact, dieters may be worse off in the long run than non-dieters. This is due to the fact that most people who go on diets not only regain the weight they lost, they gain even more. In the short term, dieting seems like a good idea, as an individual “can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of... [his or her] weight on any number of diets...” However, “then the weight comes back.”, claims UCLA associate professor Traci Mann. Diets are simply not effective in the long term, as multiple studies have found. In one particular study that tracked participants for two years, it was found that 23% of participants who were tracked for less than two years had gained back more than they lost, while 83% participants that were followed for more than two years gained back more weight than they had lost. Another study found that “50 percent of dieters weighed more than 11 pounds over their starting weight five years after the diet…” In fact, diets can be more harmful in the long term than taking no action. The cycle of gaining weight then losing it has been linked to “cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, and altered immune functions.” It is not known what causes this but its very detrimental to your health.
Growing up, I struggled with being overweight, even though I was active. As a young boy growing up on a farm somewhere in Northwest Missouri, I worked very hard doing chores the normal urbanized American would not do. My father would have me do chores every day, yet I was still overweight. Reflecting back to what what could have made me that way; many ideas began to appear in my head, so my research on nutrition began. There were many things that were argued to cause childhood obesity, however the most logical and sensible outcome that came from my research was that environmental, political, cultural, and other such factors were not to blame for my obese childhood, but nutrition was. This statement correlated with my very active childhood. My Father assigned me to do many difficult and strenuous tasks so you could say I worked up an appetite. However, this factor combined with my Mother’s inability to cook a small meal, you can imagine the amount of food I consumed on a daily basis. Not to mention the sheer fact of how much I consumed because the food tasted amazing. Mom would always say: “You have bigger eyes then your stomach”, meaning I would get more then what I needed or what I was able to eat without being uncomfortable. I would get helpings upon helpings of food, and since we did not have the money for the food to be wasted, I was forced to finish my plate. I would get in trouble if I wasted food, which is a big thing for our family.
Our metabolism, “the totality of an organism’s chemical reactions”, manages energy usage and production of cells. We use energy constantly and our metabolism breaks down food through complex chemical reactions into energy our cells
This is a classic example of human ignorance. How can one worry about something and not know what it is, where it comes from, and what it does? A French scientist, Antoine Lavoisier coined the term calorie, actually caloric, in the eighteenth century. Mr. Lavoiser observed that chemical reactions gave off heat. He believed that this heat was some form of fluid, much like water, that carried the heat away from the reaction. (Rothman, 69) Antoine was on the right track; he merely got on the wrong train.
...ams-Huet, Beverley, James, Ashlei, & Rhea, Debbie. (2014). Slower Eating Speed Lowers Energy Intake in Normal-Weight but not Overweight/Obese Subjects. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 1 March 2014.
This article talks about the pros of eating breakfast and how it is the most important meal of the day. It also talks about the guidelines of what consists of a healthy breakfast. Don’t eat fats. Avoid sugars. Eat protein at every meal. The time when you eat also plays a big factor. When you consume calories affects your weight gain and overall health. People who eat three meals a day with a snack tend to gain weight over time, on the other hand, those who ate one or two meals a day tended to lose weight. Consuming more calories in the morning and fewer as the day goes on is an effective way to maintain a healthy weight. I plan on using this
While comparing my daily food intake to what is recommended, some of the results were shocking. After using the BMI calculator, I determined that my BMI is 20.5, which is in the normal range (BMI). For the first two weeks, my calorie intake on a daily basis was 2400. The amount of calories you eat will have an effect on weight gain or weight loss. The recommended daily calorie intake is 2200 for women between the ages 19 through 24 (Grodner et al., 2012). If I continue to ea...
Burning calories is what makes us lose weight, but it is important for your health to know what your calorie intake should be. Exercise burns the calories, but if you neglect to put calories in, you will basically lose your muscle. As soon as you have convinced yourself that you are committed to becoming healthier, losing some weight will be an added bonus. Clean out the fridge and cupboards to get rid of all the stuff that tastes yummy but is bad for your health. This includes chips, ho ho’s, cookies and soda’s.
According to the United States Census Bureau, there are approximately 250 million people in the United States. Having knowledge that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, 35-40 percent of Americans skip breakfast. Without breakfast, some people become less able to do physical work in the late morning hours and some students do not perform well in the classroom. When one skips breakfast, their body shuts down their metabolism in an attempt to preserve what it contains, which causes drowsiness. Since metabolism accounts for approximately 70 percent of the body’s energy expenditure, the consumption of a healthy first meal of the day is encouraged. There are many reasons why breakfast should be a part of people’s everyday diet, but some people just do not have time to eat breakfast.
Sedentary lifestyles have greatly contributed to obesity, and to the diseases affecting to the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. It has been shown that physical inactivity reduces our strength, results in low energy levels, and causes obesity. It is therefore very essential to ensure we that lead a physically active life. Exercising regularly is the key to a healthy life. However, this is hampered by factors like lack of motivation, time and money.