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Metabobullshit

 

Let’s talk on a subject that I am very passionate about:  metabolism.  We hear about it all the time, and you likely know it’s most basic function- but what is metabolism actually?  How much do you really know about your body’s metabolic processes?  Let’s dive right in…

Metabolism, as you are imagining it, is how your body processes food.  For a fair amount that is correct, however, that body is ALWAYS more complex than that. As food moves down the digestive tract it is process and absorbed in many different locations for different purposes.  Sugars get absorbed here, fats are mixed with this and moved on and then absorbed later, even water is taken from food and absorbed through this process until we have taken all we can.  This absorption process is helped, or hindered, by your guts flora (bacteria) and how well your tract is functioning.  However, that is a topic for another day.  I’m here to talk about what happens after your body absorbs it’s nutrients. 

 

Fun thought- your food is never inside your body until it is absorbed.  The bolus as it moves is technically not in the body as we are a “tube within a tube” system.  Cue the “The More You Know” star.

 

Our nutrients get moved around and eventually make their way to be processed.  Macronutrients are what we’re really focused on here.  Those are the guys that can be used for energy- carbs, fats, and proteins.  When we take in more energy than needed, we store it.  Some is stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver, the rest is called adipose tissue or…fat mass.  We can use these stores of energy, but if we don’t it becomes a problem. 

 

Lets talk straight up metabolism for a moment: used energy.  Energy is used in the body in four different ways, and together these make up your collective “metabolism.”  These are: Resting metabolic rate, Exercise, NEAT, and Thermic Effect of food.  So what the fuck are those? Calm down, and let me tell you…

Resting Metabolic Rate:  How many calories you burn daily if you didn’t even get out of bed.  This includes your body’s functioning processes like heart rate and respiration and is affected by things like mitochondrial content and body composition. Muscle burns more calories at rest than adipose tissues.  Majority of calories burned.

Exercise: Exercise is planned, consistent stress on the body in physical activity with the hopes of positive adaptations.  This is not walking your dog. It is not your 10k steps.  It is NOT “I walk a lot at work.”  Nope.  This is resistance training, cardio, yoga- planned and consistent.  This is your biggest chance to change your metabolic rate.

NEAT: Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.  All those things I named above and said weren’t exercise fall here.  This is calories expended throughout the day in every movement except exercise. Can have an impact on metabolism.

Thermic Effect Of Food: This is how much energy it takes to process food. There are LOTS of myths here.  We will get to those. This accounts for about 10% of calories burned daily. 

 

Now, lets get dirty.  Here is my soapbox.  If you’ve learned enough then you can stop paying attention here.  Goodbye.  If you want to see me take on myths like David versus Goliath then here it is:

Skinny tea: Absolute shit.  There is 100% no such things as teas, herbs, supplements, etc that increase your metabolism.  Refer to the explanations above and tell me where any of that would even fall?  The only way skinny tea might make you burn more calories is running to the toilet with diarrhea. 

Shakes:  Your shakes have been proven to actually increase the hunger hormone response. 

Waist Trainers: not really claimed to be metabolism but does claim to remove fat from the stomach area and that would require burning it, which it 1000000000000% does not do. Ever. And will never. 

High Protein To Increase Thermic Effect of FOOD:  This is wrong for many reasons.  One- depriving yourself of calories that should be used for energy, and therefor not even having good energy to burn calories.  Two- thermic effect of food is 10% of daily calories.  On your run of the mill 2k calorie plan, that’s 200 calories.  If you ate NOTHING but protein you’d burn that much which is about 2.5 boiled eggs.  Say you went really high still and ate 50% protein- That’s 100 calories. Protein should be NO MORE THAN 30% of macros and that is 60 calories.  That’s still on the high side, and you have burned less than one boiled egg.  You don’t need that much protein, bro.

Supplements: There are no current proven supplements to increase metabolism.  If you think whatever you’re taking is increasing your metabolism it likely just has niacin in it.  That is a b complex vitamin that makes your skin feel itchy and hot.  Just because you’re hot doesn’t mean an increase in metabolism.  If so, everyone in South Carolina would be thin.  Now, there are vitamins that aid in the metabolic process, but are minimal and usually we get enough through our food.

Low/high Metabolism: kind of a myth, really.  You might have slowed down your processes by extreme calorie reduction or fad diets, but the body burns calories at the same rate for everyone in the same processes.  Now, you might have an absorption issue, and that can be serious and needs to be dealt with by a GI doctor.  Otherwise, you’ve really just taught your body to live off of less, and downregulated receptors and functions.  Not a good thing. 

Slower metabolism with Age:  now this one is slightly true, but recent research shows that our metabolism doesn’t necessarily slow that much until we are in our golden years, we just end up slowing ourselves down and consuming the same amount of calories. Think of a football player through high school and college, that gained a lot of weight later on.  This usually happens because calorie expenditure has changed and intake did not. Now, nutrition needs change as we age to fight the age-related muscle loss and such, but metabolism doesn’t necessarily change that much until your 70’s or 80’s.

So, how do we actually increase metabolic processes- that one should be easy to answer by this point.  EXERCISE, mainly.  Not only does that expend more calories daily, but it increases your muscle mass, raising your resting metabolic rate.  Increased NEAT can also help- take the stairs instead of the elevator, park farther from the building, walk the mile to the store instead of drive; remember these cannot be considered exercise though.  Also, eating the right amount.  There is a range where your body will work the most efficiently.  I always say think of metabolism like a fire- if you put everything on it at once in smothers it, and if you starve it it will go out.  Eating smaller, more frequent meals helps, and just eating enough food helps more than extremely restricted diets.  It tells the body “Hey man!  You can use this because we know we’ll be getting more later!  Keep up the good work!” 

 

In short-haha this is one of my longer blogs- don’t buy into things that claim to raise your metabolism.  Don’t listen to celebrities, influencers, or even your friends if they are trying to sell you these items or methods.  If someone does try to tell you how to raise your metabolism, simply ask them which of the four components of metabolism this helps, and if they can’t name the components or tell you how it helps any of them, then they don’t know enough about metabolism to be trying to alter yours.  And with that, I step down from my soapbox.  Stepping onto a soapbox and down from the soapbox burns about two calories.