Can I Speed Up My Metabolism

Metabolism is the complex sequence of chemical reactions inside of our body that

harnesses our flow of energy. Our body has three sources of fuels called macronutrients. They

are carbs, proteins, and fats. These three macronutrients contain calories. Calories are how we

measure energy. A calorie is a unit of energy that raises the temperature of 1kg of water by 1-

degree Celsius. Basim metabolic rate is the number of calories our body burns just through our

bodily functions. This does not include exercise and NEAT (non-exercise activity

thermogenesis). Something that I found very interesting is that some studies show that brain

activity can take up to 20% of our basic metabolic rate. Body size is directly correctly correlated

to our basic metabolic rate. Someone with more size or large amounts of muscle tissue will have

higher basic metabolic rates because their body requires more energy. This makes sense because

muscle requires nutrients and oxygen so to get these things to the muscle the body has to do

more work and the muscle requires more energy to retain it. The main myth that was busted in

this podcast was the myth that the ketogenic diet makes you burn more body fat and helps you

lose weight. The keto diet consists of significantly reducing the amount of carbs you eat in your

diet. The keto diet usually means that carbs are 10% of your calories while in a normal diet on

average carbs are 50% of your diet. The idea is that since you are depleting yourself of carbs

your glycogen storage will reduce and since you don’t have that to use for energy production you

use your fat storage instead. This means in theory you will burn off more body fat than on a

normal diet. But this is not true because in the end when it comes to losing body fat it is all about

calories in and calories out. You have to intake less calories than what you are expending in

order to lose weight. So, in a keto diet if you are eating the same number of calories that you are

expending, this is called maintenance calories, then you are not burning off fat storage. You
might be burning fat because that is macronutrient that you are eating most of, but you are not

burning body fat unless you are in a calorie deficit. This podcast also covered the myth that

people with high metabolism are skinny and people with low metabolism are usually fatter.

Studies show that high metabolic rates and low metabolic rates are not directly correlated to

obesity. It is actually more true that bigger people have a higher metabolism because of their

daily energy expenditure. The myth of weight loss products was also covered. They discussed

that no product can “hack the system” or magically make you lose more weight. The doctor also

discussed the hunter gatherer tribe that he studied. He found out that these people who has very

high activity levels because of their lifestyle actually had very similar BMR as people in

developed civilizations. It was also discussed that humans have a cap on their basic metabolic

rate. Our body only uses so much energy before it adjusts because it knows it shouldn’t be using

so much. There was a study done on marathon runners who ran a marathon almost every day and

their BMR was measured throughout the study. The marathon runner’s BMR actually began to

decrease as the study went on. This is because their body realized how much energy they were

using for their exercise and then lowered its energy use for basic bodily function in order to save

energy for activity. I learned a lot from this podcast as far as how our body functions and how we

use energy and measure energy. This aligns with this weekes lecture because it talks about the

macronutrients we digest and how we use them for energy.