Revving Up Your Metabolism

You have probably heard of the term “metabolic rate,” but if you haven’t, here is a quick review…

Metabolic rate refers to the rate at which your body burns calories on a daily basis. Your daily metabolic rate has three components:

• Organ systems (kidneys, liver, etc.), brain function, heart contractions, and respiration (breathing) are 55% to 70% of daily caloric expenditure.
• Voluntary muscular activity (any & all movement) is 20% to 40% of daily caloric expenditure.
• Digestion of food is 5% to 10% of daily caloric expenditure.

There are several methods one may utilize to increase one’s metabolic rate; most are temporary, but one is permanent…

Muscle… Does The Body Good!

My previous article touched on the extreme importance of muscle and a list of many of the important roles and functions that it plays is the body.  Today I will dive in to one of the topics and elaborate further.

Muscle and Metabolism

I believe there is a large misconception among exercisers that in order to lose weight and burn body fat that you have to do a lot of aerobic exercise and eat many small meals throughout the day to “get your metabolism going.”  If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a million times, “I have to get my cardio in.”  When it comes to burning body fat people have been incorrectly biased toward a heavy dose of slow intensity, long duration aerobic exercise.  Repeatedly biking, riding the treadmill/elliptical, and running our way toward trying to increase metabolism and have a reduction in body fat. Only, most of the time that doesn’t happen.  Why?