Understanding our metabolism – Key for all Body Transformation!

As a fitness professional, these are some of the most common questions that I come across – why don’t I see any change in my body shape? Or why don’t my muscles grow?

The answer is very simple – you have not understood your body and its needs properly. Many people struggle to meet their fitness and weight-management goals due to this reason. In most of the cases people just go with the external aspects of the training but totally neglect or fail to understand what all happens inside our body. Most of the fitness plateaus and weight balance problems can be solved by just understanding our body metabolism.

Interestingly, every individual’s metabolism is unique in terms of speed and effectiveness. One’s age, sex and genes significantly effects the rate of his/her metabolism, but lifestyle choices related to eating, physical activity and sleep helps in controlling and managing our metabolism. While it is not possible for us to change some of these genetic factors, but we can always make better lifestyle choices, which will help increase the effectiveness of your metabolism, and thereby help us achieve our health and fitness goals. Proper metabolism is essential for weight gain and weight loss.

Here are some basic things to be understood when preparing to make fitness and body weight changes:

a) Know your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) - it is the amount of energy our body requires in a day for our body to keep functioning during rest.

b) Know your Body Composition – An individual could be having a healthy BMI (Healthy body weight) but still be prone to health risks. Hence, it is very important to understand the body fat % (also understand breakdown of visceral fat percentage) and fat free mass.

c) Daily log of calorie intake-expenditure: it is very important understand and keep track of our daily calorie intake and expenditure. We should also understand where the calories are coming from – carbs, fats or protein?

d) Keep track of our day-today habits – Regular healthy meals, sufficient water intake, involvement in physical activity and good sound sleep.