I’m sure we all know someone who seems to be able to eat whatever they want without gaining weight.
“They’ve just got a great metabolism” we might say.
As always, when talking about metabolism, or anything else really, it’s worth getting clear on what we actually mean.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life”.
But I think that what we generally mean when we say “metabolism” is the correlation between the amount of calories we consume and the weight we gain or lose.
I think everyone’s on board with the fundamental concept that we all have a maintenance amount.
An amount that we can consume and stay at the same weight.
And going below that, on average, will reduce our weight and going above it will increase our weight.
I don’t think anyone believes that if they didn’t eat for a month they wouldn’t lose body fat or if they ate ten pounds of lard a day they wouldn’t gain body fat.
We just perhaps think that we have particularly low maintenance calories compared to somebody else?
However all the research ever done in controlled environments shows that the majority of our calorie requirements are dictated by our size and activity levels.
Being bigger and moving more requires more energy and vice versa.
When matched for size and activity levels the differences in energy requirements are very marginal.
Up to the magnitude of plus or minus 80 calories a day (and that can at least be some way explained by limitations of accuracy in body composition – two people of the same mass don’t necessarily have exactly the same amount of bone, muscle, fat, etc. And, if we were able to measure for this, the differences would be even smaller).
So, ultimately, if we’re significantly bigger than somebody else we have higher energy requirements.
We could argue, based on that, that we have a “better” metabolism than our smaller friend – if our activity levels are identical we can consume more before gaining weight then they can.
And that realisation is eye opening.
We go from being a victim of some magical metabolism thing………
To realising that we just need to get ourselves in that deficit if we want to lose weight.
Is that always easy?
No.
Is it that simple?
Pretty much.
Much love,
Jon ‘the devil you know’ Hall
P.S. Although it’s never “easy”, it will be considerably easier if you jump in here rather than lone wolfing it and eternally telling yourself “I know what I need to do, I just need to do it” —> www.myrise.co.uk/apply
