Allan Keller: Make the Most of Your Metabolism

People often ask me “how many calories will I burn doing <insert favorite or trendy exercise here>?” And I can’t count how many times I’ve seen advertisements touting the outrageous number of calories a new workout or gadget will burn.  Burning calories in your workouts is all fine and good but the real secret to a fiery metabolism isn’t how many calories you burn in a workout it’s how many calories you burn when you’re doing absolutely nothing. 

Sounds crazy I know, but bear with me.  You see, your metabolism dictates how much energy you require to make it through your day and is made up of several components.  Two of the areas people tend to focus on most when attempting to lose weight are how active you are throughout the day and of course exercise.  While both of these play a role in how many calories you burn each day, the biggest piece of your overall metabolism is actually your resting metabolic rate or RMR. 

In fact, resting metabolic rate can make up 50 to 70 percent of your overall daily energy expenditure.  Think about that for a second.  More than half of the calories you are going to burn in a day are based on how much energy it takes to keep your organs working, heart pumping, and lungs breathing while simply at rest.  And the really cool thing about this is that your RMR can be changed as it is largely based on how much lean muscle you have.  Since muscle burns calories (fat does not), the more muscle you have the higher your RMR will be and the more expensive – in terms of calories – it will be for your body to run each day.

Plus, there’s a domino effect at play here because the amount of calories you burn through exercising and going about your daily activities is all influenced by your RMR.  After all, if you have more muscle – being active will make use of that extra muscle and require additional energy.  Raise your RMR and you will not only burn more calories at rest but you’ll also burn more calories while you’re doing chores, running errands, playing with the kids and of course while exercising.  

If your focus is only on how to burn the most calories in your workouts you’re missing out on a huge piece of your metabolism.  By engaging in workouts which build lean muscle you can permanently elevate your resting metabolism.  Before you know it, you'll be burning more calories not just during exercise sessions but throughout the entire day, even while you're sleeping!

Allan Keller is a Westchase area fitness coach and owner of Direct Effect Fitness.  Allan can be reached at 813-333-9922 or allan@DirectEffectFitness.com. Have a question about fitness or nutrition?  Post a comment or send an email and you may see your topic featured in his next blog.