Hello, this is Monica Reinagle, and you're listening to the Nutrition Deva

podcast. Thanks for joining me this week. This is actually the 435th episode of the Nutrition Diva

podcast, believe it or not. And we're talking about metabolism this week,

specifically low metabolism. If you're unhappy with your weight or maybe you're frustrated by

your inability to lose weight or maintain weight loss, you've probably wondered

whether a slow metabolism may be to blame. Your suspicion may have been confirmed by all the diets and

programs and products out there that claim to fix a slow metabolism. So today I want to take a closer look at what factors have an impact, either positive or negative, on your metabolism,

and just how big that effect might be.

Now before we start talking about metabolism, I want to just take a moment to define some terms.

In this context, metabolism refers to your resting metabolic rate, sometimes called r-m-r.

And this is the amount of energy that your body uses

just to maintain basic biological functions,

like breathing, pumping blood, blinking, and maintaining your body temperature.

These are not the calories that you burn through activity or exercise.

For healthy adult, this accounts for somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 to 1,600 calories per day.

However, there are a few things that can lower the number of calories that your body burns in maintenance mode, or slow your metabolism and one of them is losing weight. Now this strikes a lot of

people as criminally unfair but the truth is that the smaller your body the fewer calories it takes to maintain

it but the effect is greatly amplified when you lose weight quickly. Dramatically restricting calories for more than just a couple of days

can also affect your metabolism and that's above and beyond the effect of any weight

loss that that might cause.

Losing muscle can also reduce the number of calories that you burn at rest.

Lean muscle tissue is more metabolically active than other tissues, such as bone and fat. So when you lose

...