1. You have the wrong parents. One of the most powerful influences on how efficiently your body burns calories is your genes.
2. You’re an adult. It takes a lot of energy to grow up. Once you’re full grown, you won’t burn as many calories while you sleep or sit as you used to.
3. You’re 5 foot 2. A tall person, with more body surface area, typically has a more efficient basal metabolic rate (BMR) than a shorter person of equal weight. BMR accounts for 50 to 60 percent of the calories expended every day.
4. You’re over 50. As you age, you lose muscle tone. And you know what that means – muscle burns about 8 times more calories than fat.
5. You’re a woman. Men usually have more muscle mass than women. They get the muscle, we get the fat!
6. You’ve lost weight. When you lose weight, your BMR decreases. Your body composition –percentage of body fat to muscle mass – is essentially the same as a bigger person. But their BMR is higher than yours because it takes more calories to carry all that extra weight.
7. You avoid extreme hot and extreme cold temperatures. Who doesn’t? But if you tough if out, your metabolic rate will rise! (Running a fever also increases your BMR.)
8. You’ve gone on a starvation diet. Eating too little will lower your metabolism by as much as 20%.
9. You’ve lost the same pounds over and over again. When you lose weight, you lose muscle; when you gain it back, you gain fat.
10. You don’t exert yourself. You knew that one was coming, didn’t you?

Slow Metabolism Doesn’t Cause Weight Gain. We all know this: we gain weight when we take in more calories than we burn. But we would burn more calories at rest if we had the metabolism of an adolescent male. Even when he’s asleep, he’s burning more calories than a middle-aged woman.

All is not lost, though. Here are 7 ways to increase your metabolism:

1. Fidget. Forget what your mother said about sitting still. Be a little restless.
2. Build your upper body strength. Use hand weights or resistance bands, pushups or stretching exercises.
3. Build your lower body strength. Walk. If you’re already walking, speed it up a little.
4. Eat frequent, small meals. They say this helps because it increases TEE – the Thermic Effect of Eating (10% to 15% of the calories we burn).
5. Drink green tea – or try green tea extracts. Be warned, though. It’s high in caffeine, which may interfere with the next tip.
6. Get enough sleep. Chronic sleep deprivation mimics aging by slowing metabolism.
7. Combine aerobic and muscle-building activities. Aerobic exercise affects ARE (Activity Related Energy), which accounts for 25 to 40% of the calories we burn every day. Muscle-building activities affect our resting metabolic rate.

Sure – you may have slower metabolic rates than you used to. And sure – you’d love to eat like you used to. Maybe the above suggestions will help – not just so you can eat more of what you want , but more important – to give you the energy and stamina to do what you want.

Talk to me: Have you tried strength training? How has it affected your weight and/or eating habits? Any suggestions for getting a good night’s sleep?

Sources:

“Is Your Metabolism to Blame?”by Ahmed H. Kissebah, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and pharmacology and director of the General Clinical Research Center, Medical College of Wisconsin. TOPS News, Volume 61, #8, November 2009.

“Slow Metabolism: Is It to Blame for Weight Gain?” http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/slow-metabolism/AN00618

“Lack of sleep alters hormones, metabolism,” http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/991202/sleep.shtml