We sweat the numbers on the bathroom scale so much when we become overweight or if we wish to lose fat weight. This is the way it has been for the last 30 plus years. But what you weigh has little to do with 1) the reason you have become overweight 2) how you are going to get it back off again.
Your bodyweight has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you have a healthy metabolism, and in the long term that will determine whether you remain overweight or reclaim your slim body back again.
Your metabolism is your body’s engine and you could think of it as the combined catabolic (using up) and anabolic (building up) reactions that are happening within your body every day. A healthy functioning metabolism is one where the using up and the building up reactions are matched.
Your metabolism may have slowed down
A body with good ‘metabolic fitness’ is not over-fat as it is burning up efficiently the calories from the food you eat for energy. If you are overweight it means your metabolism is ‘out of whack’ causing problems with the hormonal and chemical balance of your body and it is storing more fuel (calories) than it should be.
The cause of this can be things such as:
1) Low calorie, very low carbohydrate, protein or fat diets
2) Under eating
3) Not enough muscle building and maintaining activity
4) The wrong types of foods and too much of them
5) Yo-yo dieting
6) Excessive amounts of low intensity long duration activity
Yet funnily enough all of these items on this list are things many people do to try and lose weight. You would wonder how they could in fact cause the opposite – the gaining of weight. But all of these things are the using up (catabolic/breaking down) reactions that erode the health of the metabolism instead of keeping it healthy.
You will need to take action to restore your metabolism
You need to be putting something back into the very mechanism that controls the metabolism – your muscular system. If it has been allowed to grow weak and flabby its energy requirements are reduced and your body can no longer burn up the fuel produced from the food you eat.
So, to put something back and rebalance the body getting the muscular system strong, toned and healthy is number one on the list. Glucose is burned within the muscle cells but they can only take it in and burn it when they are functioning in healthy manner.
There is only one way to rebuild and re-tone your muscles. A proper strength training program performed 2-3 times each week with some effort put into it is what will do the job. You need to work your muscles directly under a load and there needs to be a challenge for the body if they are to become stronger and increase the metabolism to start burning off your excess body fat.
A strength training program is so effective it can reverse and cure the damage that years of poor lifestyle habits has done to your metabolism. As well as burning fat better it will also reshape your body and improve your energy levels. Your body will have better ‘metabolic fitness’ which means better overall health, vitality along with greater protection from disease.
Note: If you found the content in this article useful, please check out my home page where you'll find more information about my No Excuses Body Makeover program:
