Understanding your metabolism

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Understanding your metabolism (10/1/05)

Someone once told me the best way to really learn something was to teach it, because the questions the students ask would nearly guarantee you'd touch on all aspects of the subject, and thus, know it very well. The one problem with this tactic is the practical angle: not everyone has a class full of waiting people to pull on for any subject desired. So I came up with an alternative, which was to try to draw an analogy between what I already know about, and the new material I am learning. Doing this requires not only learning the twists and turns of the new material but also reworking the old material, in order to draw a good analogy and avoid one which might send me astray. This process can yield some strange results sometimes, which is why your reading about all of this in an article about metabolism.

We tend to think of our metabolism as something that we're either blessed with or cursed by. Some folks seek to make theirs go faster, and others slower, usually based on their perception of their size. We consider it that mysterious factor that affects how much food we can eat: can I afford to eat that last slice of pizza? Generally folks curse their metabolism, especially when dieters hit a "plateau". After several weeks of weight loss suddenly their weight stabilizes and nothing they can do, whether it be severe exercising or even drastic cuts in food intake, can make the weight start dropping again.

Now, have a look at the information presented in Muscle & Fitness/Hers in June of 2002 with regard to dietary plateaus:


Before you do anything drastic, make certain you're really on a plateau to begin with. Do a mood check. "Pay attention to your energy, concentration and strength levels throughout the day," Sassin suggests. "If you're feeling super-good, sleeping well and looking forward to your workouts, there are probably some positive internal changes happening." Though you may have stopped seeing immediate results on the outside, you may be under construction on the inside.

The converse situation, where we are tired and gloomy, means the body is actually changing to deal with the reduced intake of macro and micro nutrients, generally by reduced caloric intake. The body is actually shutting down selective parts of the metabolism to deal with what it is perceiving as a time of starvation or drought. It does this because up until 5 thousand years ago life was largely about periods of plenty and periods of nothing. We've evolved to live through that. Except now, generally, we spend our entire lives in a period of plenty. So we diet.

Now, to better understand this, let me walk you through one of those bad analogies to better understand metabolism. Let's say the gas tank in our car is getting a little low. Our car couldn't care less. Its just going to go on as if nothing is wrong, probably a bit more easily since it isn't carrying around the weight of the gas, and eventually run out of gas. On the other hand our bodies know something is up and start reacting to it. At a 1/4 of a tank it stops trying to keep us in a good mood all the time. At 1/8 it'll pull back on our energy levels, making us slow down a bit, to conserve energy. How annoying would it be if our cars did that?

On the flipside, in a time of plenty, we've just filled the car up with gas. Again, it could care less. Our bodies though, recognize the opportunity and will generally use about 400 of the calories you just ate, and store the rest in long term storage to be used during one of those times of starvation. Sadly that long term storage is called fat!

So here's the challenge: try to find an analogy that fits the behavior of our metabolism. Here is something that could help: It turns out our metabolism doesn't just govern our ability to digest but instead governs just about everything about us, from the process of our blood pumping through our bodies to the neurons firing in our brains. In fact, medically, Death (yep, the big D) is actually defined as the cessation of all metabolic activities in the body. So when we talk about making our metabolism faster, we're actually talking about "revving" our body. Ask a mechanic how healthy that is for a car. The analogy actually holds true here. Revving our bodies isn't the best of ideas.

Have you found an analogy that matches all of this?

The only one I can come up with is of a living, breathing, being. Crazy, isn't it? It's like we've got this little "pet" in all of us that we need to take care of. Feels a bit like one of those Tamagotchi toys from Japan, doesn't it? Too much food and no exercise = early death. Too little food and lots of exercise = early death. Just the right amount of food and just the right amount of exercise = long happy life.

Well, that's the basics of the concept at least. Food and exercise are just two parts of a bunch that controls how our metabolism is doing. So what else is in there? Jesse Cannone wrote a great article addressing just that. The whole article is really worth a read but here's the part we're interested in:


Here's a list of some of the factors affecting metabolism in order of biggest impact to least:

muscle tissue (you already know why this is on the top of the list [Sorry Jesse, we're quoting you so they don't. Basically it's because the more mass you have the more calories you'll need to burn at once, hence a faster metabolism. Y'all really oughta read his article... -Jay])
meal frequency (the longer you go between meals the more your metabolism slows down to conserve energy)
activity level (important but doesn't make any difference if you don't match your eating to your expenditure)
food choices (ex. low-fat diets tend to result in poor hormone production which leads to a slower metabolism)
hydration (over 70% of bodily functions take place in water - not enough water causes all your systems to slow down and unnecessary stress)
genetics (some people have higher metabolisms than others - you can't change genetics but you can still win the battle!)
hormone production and function (think you have a slow thyroid? it's not likely - before you go blame it on the thyroid first stabilize your blood sugar and throw in some progressive exercise 2-3 times each week)
stress (stress also can slow metabolism by placing extra stress and strain on numerous systems. plus, many people tend to overeat when "stressed out")

Jesse's got the guide to taking care of your new Tamagotchi (erm, I mean, you). And I'm sure other folks will have a lot of advice as well. But at the base of it all just remember this: your talking about you, a living, breathing, being. Do what is going to make it work optimally. From what I've seen so far, that means a good balance of a lot of things, not excess anything. Exercise, good food, laughing, reading, challenging work, etc...