Most people have tried some sort of diet in January to help lose the christmas weight, you may have cut out alcohol, reduced calories significantly, or fasted for days!! But what effect has it had on your body long term??
When people start to diet they reduce the calorie intake often too much to give long term benefits. This often leads to a decrease in Lean Body Mass and therefore a reduction in metabolism. It is now thought that this decrease in metabolism comes from adaptive thermogenesis. This is a bit like turning the lights down in your house – The lights are still on but they are using less energy! – You still function but you are burning fewer and fewer calories doing the normal day to day activities.
A person will typically burn energy through the following ways –
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) – 60-75%
Physical Activity – 17-32%
Thermal effect from eating food – 8%
BMR is the amount of energy you will burn from the bodys normal function at rest. Within the BMR is NEAT, Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This is the body shaking, twitching, muscle re-building etc that often goes unnoticed but is constant throughout your normal day. As people lose weight their metabolism decreases often through a decrease in NEAT. The body feels it is starving so becomes more efficient, spending less energy in its daily function! The problem comes as the body over compensates to the point where up to 500calories a day are removed from your BMR!!! As the body becomes more and more efficient it focuses on burning a higher percentage of fat but a lot less calories overall. Therefore as soon as you return to normal eating habits after a diet your body no longer requires the calories as before and any excess calories are stored as fat in preperation for the next food shortage and the next efficiency drive on the bodies resources. NEAT does not return to normal just because you start eating properly again, infact it will stay reduced forever unless it is fired back up!! Repeated dieting has been seen to reduce peoples BMR by up to 80%, when this happens it is extremely difficult to return to normal and people tend to just get bigger!
The solution is not to crash diet, do things in control and ideally under supervision. Increasing your metabolism with the right type of exercise is essential. If you feel your metabolism has already been effected through previous diets you will have to undertake structured, supervised exercise to re-start (or fire up) your metabolism again!! Increasing your protein intake will also help but it is the structured exercise as NEAT decreases in your body that will help keep the weight off and the metabolism high! There has been a lot of press in the last few weeks with High Intensity Training (HIT!), New Life Training have been using a form of this training for the last 3 years in order to boost peoples metabolism and it works, just look at our testimonials for proof! New Life Training use High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) as a variation to the HIT seen on TV and in the press this month. This form of exercise has been proven to regenerate your metabolism through increasing NEAT. Our classes all focus on HIIT, so you may look to attend a Bootcamp, Box Circuits or a P.H.I.I.T. class or undertake Personal Training to help this process. Give Mark a call to discuss where your metabolism may be and what solutions there may be for you, 07771 985015.
If you think your metabolism could do with a boost or you would like to lose weight under a safe supervised environment then New Life Training is able to help. We will assess your BMR, Body Fat %, weight and muscle % every 6-10 weeks as a personal training client. Why not find out how we can help you, Call 07771 985015 now to book a free consultation.
