Your Metabolism and Dieting

Many people go through their weight loss journey trying different dieting plans regardless of whether they work or not. What many don't realise is that some of these diet regimes are detrimental to their health. A low calorie, rapid weight loss or a food restriction diet for example greatly affect your metabolism by decreasing it and at times making it difficult for you to lose weight. 

Metabolism is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. You then can use this energy for many different things such as exercising or getting through the day. There are many ways in which drastic dieting can affect your metabolism, here are the top three ways: 

1. Eating increases our metabolism due to the energy required for digestion and absorption of the food. Skipping meals causes a decrease in your metabolic rate until you eat something. Skipping breakfast or lunch and eating a large dinner means missing out on two important changes to increase your metabolism or boost the number of calories you burn. 
2. Reducing calories lowers the body's metabolism. Your body treats any reduction in food intake as an impending starvation situation and prepares itself by slowing your metabolism to conserve calories. The more drastically you cut calories, the more your metabolic rate drops. 
3. Losing weight through dieting alone without adding exercise depletes your muscle tissue stores. Muscle requires many calories each day to maintain itself. The faster you lose weight through dieting alone, the more muscle tissue you lose. Exercise prevents muscle tissue loss and adds muscle.

The best way to keep your metabolism elevated, and to burn more calories, even at rest, is to do the following: 

o    Avoid diets especially rapid weight loss diets 
o    Eat frequent small meals or snacks throughout the day when you are hungry 
o    Add more muscle to your body through strength and interval training (HITT), CrossFit workout 
o    Burn more calories through strength aerobic activities like HITT 



Sherldine Tomlinson, MSc, R.Kin