Burning Fat and Your Metabolism


Written on October 6, 2007 – 12:36 pm | by Jeff Ainslie

I came across a CBC article called “Your Metabolism, Burn Calories Burn“. It talked about how to calculate how many calories that you naturally burn in a day, but what I found to be the most important part was how to keep your metabolism revving so that you can burn more fat.

Here are some main points:
- You can’t change your basal metabolic rate (what you burn just to stay alive), but you can drastically change how many calories in a day you burn through increasing your activity.
- Muscle naturally burns calories and the more muscle you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate.
- The reason that your metabolism slows down as you age, is that you naturally lose muscle mass. You lose 2-3% of your entire muscle mass every decade after 30. (Each pound of muscle can add up to 50 cals/day to your basal metabolic rate)

Here are some tips:
- Eat 5 or 6 small meals throughout the day.
- Eat a balanced diet of all the food groups.
- Strength train to maintain your natural muscle mass.
- 20-30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise 5 times per week.

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  1. 2 Responses to “Burning Fat and Your Metabolism”

  2. By peter bravado on Sep 1, 2009 | Reply

    i know this is quite an old post but i hope you guys will read it and address it on your next show. i dont need to say much beyond copying the following from about.com and leaving the explanation to you:

    Question: How Many Calories Does Muscle Really Burn?

    Answer: Most people know that muscle burns more calories than fat but, just how much more? Ever since I got certified more than eight years ago, I’ve been told that a pound of muscle burns anywhere from 30 to 50 calories per day. However, after doing some research, I’ve found that number isn’t accurate. In fact, a pound of muscle only burns about 6 calories a day…a lot less than what many of us thought, but still more than a pound of fat, which burns only 2 calories in a day.

    http://exercise.about.com/od/exerciseworkouts/f/muscle.htm

  3. By Russ Turley on Sep 2, 2009 | Reply

    It won’t make it in the next show, but we will cover the topic. Thanks for the question.

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