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Metabolism – What is Metabolism?

Metabolism is the amount of energy (calories) your body burns to maintain itself. Whether you are eating, drinking, sleeping, cleaning etc your body is constantly burning calories to keep you going.Metabolism is affected by your body composition. By body composition, I mean the amount of muscle you have versus the amount of fat. Muscle uses more calories to maintain itself than fat. People who are more muscular (and have a lower percentage of body fat) are said to have a higher metabolism than others that are less muscular.

For example, let’s say you have two people who are the exact same height and weight. One exercises on a regular basis with weights, in addition to aerobic exercise, and has a low percentage of body fat. The other never exercises and has a higher percentage of body fat. The first person who exercises will have a higher metabolism than the second person. What this basically means is that person #1′s body will use more calories to sustain itself than person.

Metabolism aids in digestive function as well as absorption of nutrients. It is most affected by nutrition, hydration and physical activity. Each of these items is an imperative aspect of optimum metabolic health. When any one of these is lacking, the metabolic rate decreases. Consequently, weight loss and weight maintenance are directly related to healthy metabolism.

While lowering your calorie and fat intake may be important parts of weight loss, both decrease your metabolism. It is therefore essential to stimulate the metabolic rate through other means such as routine physical activity. It is not a good idea to skip meals or to reduce calories by an extreme amount, since decreased metabolism causes the body to burn fewer calories and less fat. It may also cause your body to store excess fat in reserve.

Metabolism is also the process the body uses to break down chemicals such as drugs. When you take medication, your body employs catabolic metabolism, to break down larger molecules into smaller ones that can be more readily absorbed. Anabolic metabolism is the opposite of catabolic. It uses enzymes to structure larger molecules from smaller ones.