Does High Metabolism Make You Lose Weight?
NOTE: The following is guest post from John Barban. John is a professional strength coach and author of ” The Anything Goes Diet” and ” Venus Index Workout”
So you’ve probably read some sort of marketing about foods that can ‘boost’ your metabolism and crash diets that can ‘slow down’ your metabolism.
This is all clever marketing speak. There is nothing you can do to speed up or slow down your metabolism to any degree that will cause weight loss or weight gain.
Getting caught up thinking about your ‘metabolism’ is just going to distract you from what is really responsible for your weight loss…and that is controlling your food intake.
A dramatically heightened metabolic rate that is high enough to also cause significant calorie burning would mean that you’re also running a very high fever and are very sick.
This is obviously not a good way to be losing weight. Adding muscle doesn’t do much to your metabolic rate either as one extra pound of muscle only burns about 5 more calories per day.
And finally stimulant supplements marketed as metabolic boosters can only increase the amount of daily calories you burn by 75-125 calories per day…this is about the same as having one extra cup of coffee with cream and sugar.
The marketing focused on metabolism is very powerful because most people make the mistake of assuming they can ‘feel’ their metabolic rate.
It’s easy to assume being ‘tired’ or lethargic means you have a slower metabolism. But this isn’t true. What it means is that you didn’t get enough sleep!
Metabolic rate isn’t anything you can ‘feel’ (besides the short term elevation of heart rate and sweating when you exercise).
The truth is your metabolism is going to be pretty stable no matter what you do.
The good news is that for the vast majority of people and this likely includes you too, there is nothing wrong with your metabolism. And that’s a good thing.
Try to avoid the marketing hype about metabolism and keep your focus on what really matters for weight loss.
