- What's up guys? It's your girl, FrumpyFit
and if you don't know who I am, I'm an online weightloss coach
who's dedicated to calling out all the BS in the fitness industry
and providing you with accurate fitness, nutrition, and weight loss information.
Today we're talkin' about metabolism.
More specifically, what is your metabolism?
What are the four things that contribute to your metabolism,
and what are some effective ways to actually boost your metabolism?
I'm also gonna highlight some of the myths
that people believe boosts their metabolism that actually don't.
So the official definition of metabolism is
the chemical processes that occur in a living organism in order to maintain life.
So we can look at metabolism as the total number of calories
that you burn in a single day that are required
for you to maintain your life
because the chemical processes that occur in your body
are using energy, or burning calories.
Calories are just units of energy.
So for this video, let's say metabolism
is the total number of calories that you're burning in a day.
So your specific metabolism is determined
by your age, your height, your sex, and your weight.
And what a lot of people don't understand,
especially when they're claiming to have either a slow or a fast metabolism,
the heavier you weigh, the more calories that you burn.
So actually, having a fast metabolism
is more associated with people who are heavier and overweight or obese.
They're burning significantly more calories in a day
than someone who is skinny, or smaller.
So when people are claiming that their metabolism
is either fast or slow, they're really claiming
that their metabolic rate is slower or faster
than the average person who is their same age, height, sex, or weight.
It's actually not common for someones metabolic rate
to be below or above average.
Now according to this article by examine.com
which has 27 unique references to scientific papers,
96% of people stay within 200 to 300 calories of the average metabolism.
So according to this, 96% of people do not have a slower or faster metabolic rate.
But I see so many people claiming that they do.
And what this article also points out
is that people who do have an abnormally high metabolic rate,
tend to compensate for that by eating more calories,
and we know that the way that you can lose weight
or gain weight is by manipulating your calories.
So the people who do actually have an abnormally high
metabolic rate tend to naturally just eat more.
So it's rare that having an abnormally high metabolic rate
is actually associated with weight loss.
If you've seen any of my other videos,
you know that in order to lose weight, you have to be in a calorie deficit,
which means burning more calories than you consume per day.
So when people are looking to boost their metabolism,
they usually don't wanna make any changes to their diet,
they just wanna naturally burn more calories.
So we're gonna look at the four different reasons
that our bodies burn calories, and talk about ways
that you can actually effectively boost your metabolism.
So the first reason that our body burns calories
is just for basic survival.
This is called your BMR, or your basal metabolic rate.
This is how many calories you burn when you're sleeping, or even in a coma.
Your body requires lots of energy in order to just survive,
without even taking into consideration any movement at all.
When I tell people that they have to burn more calories than they consume every day,
a lot of people assume that I mean you have to burn
more calories through exercise than you consume every day.
But BMR makes up the majority of the calories that you burn every day.
So no, you don't have to burn 2,000 calories from exercise
in order to eat 2,000 calories, 'cause your body's burning
a lot of those calories without you even doing anything.
I'll add a BMR calculator in the description
if you wanna figure out what your personal BMR is.
But let's move on to the second reason
why your body burns calories,
and that's called the Thermal Effect of Food.
That just means how many calories it takes your body
to digest the food that you eat everyday.
The third reason that our body burns calories
is called the Thermal Effect of Activity.
And some people stop here and say that there are three ways,
but I like to distinguish and say the fourth reason is called
NEAT, or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.
So we have calories that we burn from exercise,
and calories that we burn from activity that's not considered exercise.
So, that's number three and four.
Planned exercise is obviously things like going to the gym,
doing yoga, going on a run, but non-exercise activity can be,
me moving my hands in this video, brushing my teeth,
doing laundry, walking from my car to work in the morning.
All of those things also add up in the number of calories that we burn every day.
So now I wanna dive in further into each
of those different reasons that your body burns calories
and figure out how we can hack each one in order to boost your metabolism.
So number one is BMR.
Your basal metabolic rate, how many calories that you burn at rest.
The way that we can hack this is, confusingly, by exercising.
What happens when we exercise is there's something called EPOC,
or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.
So let's say your resting metabolic rate is here,
you exercise, so you're burning a lot of calories,
but it doesn't go all the way back down to your normal resting
after the exercise occurs, it's a little bit elevated
because your body is recovering from the exercise
that you just did, so that's called EPOC.
And the reason I put it in the category of BMR even though it's exercise,
is because this can last up to 24 hours after you exercise.
Another way that you can increase your BMR is by gaining muscle.
Muscle is more metabolically active than fat tissue is.
So the more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns
sitting there doing nothing because it has to maintain that muscle mass.
And the last way to boost your metabolism
is to just generally support your health.
To eat enough fruits and veggies and fiber,
to get enough sleep and to drink enough water.
If you are not taking care of your body, your body cannot run optimally,
and so a way to support your metabolism is to support your overall health.
And I know those suggestions aren't that exciting,
but BMR is just one of the four ways.
But before we move on, I wanna talk about some myths.
So a myth that I get a lot is that eating frequent meals
throughout the day, so let's say you eat six meals instead of three,
eating frequent meals does not boost your metabolism.
And the myth that's probably the most popular
is supplements and weird metabolism boosting ingredients or drinks.
And I see these all over TikTok, all over social media,
of people claiming that a certain beverage or supplement or whatever else
is gonna boost your metabolism, and it's simply not true.
The only supplement or ingredient that actually has
significant efficacy in increasing your metabolic rate is ephedrine,
and ephedrine is illegal in the United States because it is dangerous.
So there's no supplement on the market
or any weird combination of ingredients
that's gonna boost your metabolism significantly enough to make a difference.
So please stop buying metabolism boosting supplements
or drinking weird combinations of ingredients
that you see on social media because they will not work.
Okay so next up, how can we boost the digestive part of our metabolism?
How can we burn more calories based on the foods that we're eating?
So the number one way to do this is to consume more protein.
There are three macronutrients, carbs, proteins, and fats,
and by far, protein burns more calories from digestion
than the other two macronutrients.
So, if you consume more protein, you're gonna burn more calories
in order to digest that protein.
The thing that you have to understand is,
that you can't just add protein on to what you're eating,
because that will add more calories.
So if you eat 2,000 calories every day,
don't add on protein to the 2,000.
Consume more of the 2,000 from protein.
And so now the biggest myth for this category
is that there are negative calorie foods.
I've heard a lot that celery is a negative calorie food,
that there's fewer calories in the celery than it takes to digest it.
I also heard when I was in high school that almonds were a negative calorie food,
and I believed it because I hadn't started my degree
or studied any of this yet, I just listened to what anybody told me.
And negative calorie foods just don't exist.
Now we're moving onto the third reason,
which was thermal effective activity, or planned exercise.
So obviously any exercise you do is gonna burn calories
which boosts the number of calories you burn total for the day.
But the ways that we can hack this are going back to what I said in BMR,
where weight lifting will help you build muscle
which is more metabolically active,
and we wanna take advantage of EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption,
which you'll get from intense workouts.
Something like HIIT where you're going super intense for a shorter amount of time,
that's gonna be great for boosting your metabolism
for the next 24 hours after you've done that intense exercise.
But also, I really think that people get so caught up
in tryin' to pick the exercise that burns the most number of calories,
instead of thinking about what they're actually gonna enjoy doing.
I think people super underestimate actually enjoying the exercise that you're doing.
And so if you have a list, say weight lifting and HIIT cardio
is gonna be the most effective way for you to burn the most calories,
but you hate them so much that you never do them,
then you'd be better off coming up with a plan that on paper burns less calories,
but in actuality burns more because you're actually gonna do it.
So I always recommend finding exercise that you enjoy.
For me, this is dancing.
I go to dance classes all the time
and you burn so many calories, and you don't even realize it
because it's pretty fun.
And this is gonna be different for everybody,
this can be hiking, rock climbing, dancing, hula hooping, frolicking out in a meadow,
literally anything that you can think of that would be enjoying to you,
do it and make it a part of your life.
'Cause if you enjoy burning the calories,
you're gonna burn more calories because you do it more often.
And I can't think of any myths that I've heard of
about this particular category about exercise
and it's influence on metabolism,
so if you've heard any and you have a question about it,
put it in the comments and I will answer it.
And the last and final category is gonna be that
non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
So the activities that we do throughout the day
that we wouldn't consider planned exercise.
So I always recommend to clients not to underestimate the power of this category.
When I worked at my office job, I always parked on the second floor
of the parking garage every single day, even if there were spots
on the first floor, 'cause then I knew I would be taking
flights of stairs every single day that I otherwise wouldn't have
if I parked on the first floor.
So anything that you can think of that's gonna increase
the amount of calories you burn without actually having to exercise.
A huge issue that I see with people who wanna boost their metabolism,
or wanna lose weight in general, is that they're looking for quick fixes.
But the best way to lose weight is to create
new sustainable behaviors that will get you the results
in the long run, and ones that you end up not even noticing that you're doing.
Okay, so for this category and the myths,
I see a lot of people recommending things like chewing gum
and while it is technically true that chewing gum every single day
will help you burn more calories, I just think that it's kind of a waste of time.
It's a pretty small activity to be doing,
and I think that if you're really dedicated to losing weight
and wanting to boost your metabolism, there are much better things that you can do
and invest your time and effort in, than chewing gum every waking moment of the day.
So, in conclusion, you probably don't have a slow or a fast metabolism.
And even if you do, it's likely not contributing
as much to your weight loss or weight gain that you think it is.
And the most effective ways that I recommend
to boost your metabolism are to take care of yourself
by eating well, sleeping enough, and drinking enough water.
By doing some sort of resistance training.
To exercise, especially things like HIIT.
Eat a higher percentage of your calories from protein.
And the last, don't underestimate non-exercise activity.
So I hope that explained metabolism in a way
that you were able to understand, and gave you some great tips
that you can utilize in order to burn more calories every day.
So that's all I have for you today guys,
thank you so much for watching,
and I will see you guys next time.
Okay, bye!