Every individual interested in losing fat and having a better body must understand the concept of metabolism for it is perhaps the most important human process related to altering one’s physical state.

The word “metabolism” has its roots in the Greek language. It simply means “change” or “transformation.” This “transformation” relates to all the processes in the human body where one substance is broken down and converted to another substance or to energy. People typically use the word “metabolism” to denote the process of the body breaking down food after being ingested and the subsequent use of the broken down food as energy.

So why is the concept of metabolism so vital to our health? Simply because our rate of metabolism affects the amount of energy (e.g. food) our body requires in a given day. Ingest too little food and your body burns its supplies of stored energy (as fat and/or muscle). Ingest too much food and your body stores the excess (as fat and/or muscle).

The amount of energy our body burns in a given day is referred to as our Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). The BMR is a bare-bones measurement of what our bodies need to stay alive should we just, say, lay on the couch all day. Ingesting our BMR would provide just enough energy for our bodies perform the millions of biological functions occurring all the time without tapping into our body’s stored energy (fat and muscle).

That’s just great. So the BMR tells us what we need to stay alive. What has that got to do with being healthy? Just stick with me for a minute…

Since the BMR doesn’t present us a realistic picture of our energy (food) requirements (not many people lay on the couch all day, every day) it’s not very applicable. However, we can take our BMR and factor things in such as activity level and body composition (how much fat and muscle we have) and get a more realistic idea of what our body requires on a daily basis that’s specific to our lifestly needs. For example, a construction worker will burn more calories during a typical workday than, say, a computer programmer.

Let me reiterate: one’s caloric requirements is based on body composition. This implies that Joe Schmoe who is 200 pounds with 40% body fat will have a different caloric requirement than his brother Tom Schmoe of 200 pounds with 10% body fat. Interestingly enough, muscle burns calories. Tom Schmoe will have a higher BMR simply by having more muscle. What’s this mean? It simply means that increasing one’s amount of muscle increases the amount of calories one burns in a day.

Having a high metabolism is critical to burning excess body fat. One of the most efficient methods to raise one’s metabolism is by building muscle through weight training.