Metabolism

mdrichardsons

Ok so I am a believer in cico for sure my question is how does metabolism fit in to this? Does it change quickly? When people say they can't loose weight the first thing they say is my metabolism is really bad. Obviously most of the cases it's a matter of not wanting to admit the truth but I don't think I understand it well. Can you improve your metabolism or damage it? Make it so you can eat more calories and still maintain? Or is it only set by age?

ogtmama

I think most people talk about metabolism as the rate their body burns calories at rest, which is determined by the amount of lean muscle mass you have and is therefore completely changeable...I'm pretty sure that the notion of a metabolism you are born with and leaves you just plain lucky or unlucky has been debunked though.

T0M_K

piling on muscle can cause you to burn more calories to sustain the muscle. however, i believe metabolism is a fairly static thing. people want to blame their metabolism for a lifetime of bad eating. if our metabolism stalled..anorexia and starvation wouldn't be much of a thing. what you do is eat at the level you need to lose or gain and the only way i know to do that is to track what you eat and measure your results. metabolism is just the engine running it. work with it instead of trying to change it.

Seffell

I can't send you links to prove it at the moment but I remember reading some scientific paper about a study that showed that the BMR of the participants in the trial of similar age, gender, weight and height was very similar. That is the BMR does not vary much if at all, opposite to popular beliefs. So the formulas for BMR you can find online are generally quite accurate. The variance comes mostly from otherwise burned calories, not metabolism.

jemhh

You can eat more if you become more active. More muscle provides some increase as well. I tend to think that many people who think they have poor metabolisms eat more calories than they think and don't move enough.

capaul42

A lot of the problem is that most of us has been spoon fed this metabolism stuff since we were little. I remember my mom telling people I had a slow metabolism when I was a chunky 11 year old. I always thought my metabolism was messed up for decades. It wasn't until I started MFP and started reading more about it that I realized that all the crap I've believed was wrong. All the stuff the media and diet "experts" said was wrong. My metabolism isn't slow or messed up. I was just lazy.

psuLemon

mdrichardsons wrote: »

Ok so I am a believer in cico for sure my question is how does metabolism fit in to this? Does it change quickly? When people say they can't loose weight the first thing they say is my metabolism is really bad. Obviously most of the cases it's a matter of not wanting to admit the truth but I don't think I understand it well. Can you improve your metabolism or damage it? Make it so you can eat more calories and still maintain? Or is it only set by age?

In the case of MFP, when people suggest they have a slow metabolism or fast metabolism (<-- standard response in the gaining weight section), it's because they aren't tracking calories. But for the most part, people fall within one standard deviation of the mean.

https://examine.com/faq/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-people/

Extending this into practical terms and assuming an average expenditure of 2000kcal a day, 68% of the population falls into the range of 1840-2160kcal daily while 96% of the population is in the range of 1680-2320kcal daily. Comparing somebody at or below the 5th percentile with somebody at or above the 95th percentile would yield a difference of possibly 600kcal daily, and the chance of this occurring (comparing the self to a friend) is 0.50%, assuming two completely random persons.

Having said that, there are situations where people can temporarily or semi-permanently effect metabolic functions. Aggressive dieting and long term calorie suppression will increase muscle loss and increase adaptive thermogenesis. This will lower BMR/RMR functions as your metabolic rate will decrease and become more efficient.

You "reverse" those effects by 1. gaining muscle (if lost), 2. Exercise (break down of muscle tissue will cause some increases in metabolic function as your body is looking to repair, or 3. slowly increasing calories (in the cases of long term suppression)

From my understanding on # 3, the purpose is to rebaseline leptin and ghrelin levels. And your RMR will increase due to the additional calories, so it will reverse the aforementioned efficiency. But I will defer if others have more information.

AliceDark

mdrichardsons wrote: »

Can you improve your metabolism or damage it? Make it so you can eat more calories and still maintain? Or is it only set by age?

Your base metabolic rate isn't the only thing that impacts how much you can eat and still maintain. Calorie burns from exercise and non-exercise activity are very easy to manipulate and are entirely within your control. I tend to believe that when you look at someone and think they have a "fast metabolism", you're almost certainly looking at someone with a normal metabolism and a high daily activity level.

FWIW, I personally tend to believe that the majority of people are within normal metabolic parameters, with the possible exception of people who have had drastic and fast weight loss or who are long-term yoyo dieters (if you lose fat+muscle, gain the fat back, and repeat over time, you eventually negatively impact your body composition).

cityruss

Unless you have a specific medical disorder it's not something to even give passing thought to.

To make scale go up - consume moreally
To make scale go down - consume less

cwang125

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/metabolic-damage

Excerpts:


“Is my metabolism damaged?”
Can months or years of dieting do some kind of long-term harm to the way the human body processes food?
Not exactly.
But gaining and losing fat can change the way your brain regulates your body weight.

Losing weight won’t “damage” your metabolism.
But because of the adaptations your body undergoes in response to fat loss (to prevent that fat loss, in fact), ‘energy out’ for those who have lost significant weight will always be lower than for people who were always lean.
Rather:
Losing weight, and keeping it off, is accompanied by adaptive metabolic, neuroendocrine, autonomic, and other changes.
These changes mean that we expend less energy — around 5-10 percent less (or up to 15 percent less at extreme levels) than what would be predicted based on just weighing less.
Unfortunately, because of this adaptive response, someone who has dieted down will often require 5-15 percent fewer calories per day to maintain the weight and physical activity level than someone who has always been that weight.
(Or even less, potentially, because as we learned in the very beginning, the RMR of people of the exact same age/weight/etc. can still vary by up to another 15 percent.)
This means someone who was never overweight might need 2,500 calories to maintain their weight, while someone who had to diet down to that weight may need only 2,125-2,375 calories to hold steady.
We don’t know how long this lowered energy expenditure lasts. Studies have shown that it can hang around for up to 7 years after weight loss (or more, 7 years is as far as it’s been studied). This likely means it’s permanent, or at least persistent.
This is extra relevant for people who have repeatedly dieted, or for fitness competitors who may repeatedly fluctuate between being extremely lean and being overweight in the off-season.

All of this explains why some people can feel like they’ve “damaged” their metabolism through repeated dieting. (And why some experts suggest “metabolic damage” is a real thing.)
But nothing really has been “damaged”.
Instead, their bodies have just become predictably more sensitive to various hormones and neurotransmitters. Their metabolic rates are understandably lower than predicted by various laboratory equations.

AnnPT77

Two things I found helpful/informative:

Does metabolism vary between two people? at Examine.com

Reduced metabolism/TDEE beyond expected from weight loss in Heybales blog here on MFP. Among other good things, it explains, and includes the link to, a relevant study (or two).

mdrichardsons

Thanks everyone you have been very helpful. I knew a lot of this but wasn't really putting it all together.

capaul42 wrote: »

A lot of the problem is that most of us has been spoon fed this metabolism stuff since we were little. I remember my mom telling people I had a slow metabolism when I was a chunky 11 year old. I always thought my metabolism was messed up for decades. It wasn't until I started MFP and started reading more about it that I realized that all the crap I've believed was wrong. All the stuff the media and diet "experts" said was wrong. My metabolism isn't slow or messed up. I was just lazy.

Yes this... So much misinformation out there I'm trying to sort out what is fact and fiction. I think I was thinking of metabolism as this thing that drastically changed day to day. Or like a chemical in the body that we just needed to have more of. Ha