Metabolism is the fine art of transforming nutrients of the most diverse nature and origin into usable basic building blocks for the body. Metabolism has 2 parts: anabolism and catabolism, the former builds and the latter destroys compounds. The life of the healthy human depends on the balance of these 2 processes. If anabolism is predominant, like in children, you feel full of energy, vigorous, on the other hand if catabolism is predominant, then you feel tired, bored and have little taste for life…
What happens with obese people? Medical studies have proven that more than 60% of all obesity cases are caused by increased food intake. This might be a surprise for you, but I will explain the mechanism right away. Modern life and especially work creates a vicious circle with stress and bad eating habits. Eating is a good way to relieve stress, but stress makes for irregular meals. What does the body understand from this? Irregular eating habits have a disastrous effect on metabolism because most of the nutrients end up into storage: lipids or fat. This is why many weight loss programs exist and have good results.
Obvious or not, one question pops out: if anabolism is responsible for accumulating fat, wouldn’t it be possible to somehow influence catabolism and burn fat? Yes it can be done, but you need to be very patient. The Krebs cycle is the turntable of almost all metabolic pathways of our organism. Proteins and carbs break down into little pieces and enter the Krebs cycle thus fueling the human body. So does fat, but unfortunately proteins are the first to break down if you go and exercise like mad for 2-3 hours. Again programs and timetables are essential for the body to understand that the energy needed should be provided trough the catabolism of fat. We cannot make this a goal, but it should rather be a natural consequence of our lifestyle.
Loosing weight by increase of metabolic rate or BMR is an old idea, many suggest drugs as a way. For an obese person to loose weight it has to transform itself both physically and mentally. If the physical change occurs over night, your subconsciousness works against this change. Your body needs to adjust so that it won’t regain it’s weight. A powerful example is that of the “phantom limb†a person feels after loosing one arm. His or her brain still thinks that the limb is there…
If you are one of those persons that try to loose weight, your problem is very complex and you mustn’t try to do this on your own. Get help! Never think of metabolism and BMR and how to change that, think about how to live a healthy life instead of how to take shortcuts.
