Metabolism, in a simple term, is the way our body converts food that we eat and stored sugar and fat into energy. When learning about metabolism you may come across phrase like higher and lower metabolic rate, which means body is more efficient or less efficient in converting food into energy. Metabolic rate would contribute to physical and cognitive performance, fat loss and muscle gains, and recovery from your activities.
Not Just About Calorie
When talking about metabolism, majority want to discuss about thermodynamic or "calorie in, calorie out" as if it is the only thing that matters. Although there may be some truth to that concept, however, we are way more complicated than the car.
It would have been really simple and easy if it was just about calories because all we need to do is eat less, move more. How often has that been working? Even when this concept seems to be working for some but why it is working or not working is more critical to understand so that you can make adjustment.
Key ingredient to metabolism is hormone. When there is hormonal imbalance, thermodynamic theory does not work because it is more than calories.
Hormonal Balance Impact Metabolism
Here are few hormones that have impact on our metabolism.
Thyroid hormone is required to regulate metabolism in adults. Activation of T4 which then convert into T3 by D2 is a key mechanism of thyroid hormone regulating metabolism. These may sound like Star Wars droids, but they are our hormones. D2 is expressed in the hypothalamus, white fat, brown fat, skeletal muscle and is necessary for creating energy and heat in our body.
Insulin and glucagon ratio may also have impact on our metabolism. Insulin and glucagon are regulated in our pancreas. Whether insulin or glucagon is secreted is dictated by our blood sugar level as well as our stress hormone called cortisol. When insulin level is high glucagon level will be low and when insulin level is low then the glucagon level will be high. When insulin level is high, our body wants to store energy and nutrients. This process is important because without insulin our body cannot store energy or nutrients which may lead to mineral and vitamin deficiency that can cause health issues. While insulin level is high our metabolism slows down. Which means when we consume frequent meal, we are lowering our metabolism. On the other hand, when glucagon level is high, the metabolism also increases by using stored energy such as glycogen or fat.
When we are exercising or our body is at stress, our metabolism will be high. However, when cortisol is chronically elevated, our body secretes insulin to bring the cortisol level down. You may recall wanting to eat sugary or salty food when you are stressed out rather than eating healthy food sources. This is to bring the insulin level down along with cortisol. In a way fast acting carbs, such as fruits, can help regulate cortisol level. However, when this process become frequent you may accumulate more body fat for metabolism drops due to the high insulin level.
Effect of Daily Habits to Metabolic Rate
Hormonal information can be complex and overwhelming to understand. More important question you may have been how we can manipulate our hormones to regulate our metabolism in our daily habits.
First daily habit to be mindful is the nutrition. What you eat is important, but frequency of meal is also important. When you are consuming whole natural food sources, such as vegetables, meat, seafood, fruits, nuts, seed, you should have decent health. Of course, if you have certain health and fitness goals, ratio of how much food sources you should consume may vary.
Frequency, though, may need to be closely monitored. When we consume food, although amount of insulin that the pancreas secretes may vary from food sources regardless of what we eat, yet pancreas is still secreting insulin. Therefore, more frequently we eat more frequently the insulin will be secreted without any down time. This also means that metabolic rate during those time are lower than usual.
Start off with 3 meals a day with at least 4 hours between meals. This will give body a chance to lower the insulin (2-3 hours) and increase glucagon level so that the metabolic rate increases, which means that body is in energy using mode.
Second daily habit is strength training. Not cardio? Cardio exercises are important, however, to improve metabolism we do need to build muscles. Muscle fiber contains mitochondria which is energy producing organelles. Majority of our cells do carry mitochondria, however, because muscle contains abundance, and we can grow muscles by strength training, it is more efficient way to increase our metabolic rate.
Having more muscle means energy inefficient from the body standpoint, which means require a lot more energy to build and even more so to maintain. So rather than training occasionally, it is ideal to be training 2-3 hours per week with 24 to 48-hour recovery time in between sessions for a starter.
Of course, if you are exercising but not eating properly then you may have difficult time improving your metabolism. Which means, as you may have heard before, that exercise and nutrition need to be in sync.
Third daily habit is sleep. Because of the busy lifestyle, we have tendency to down grade the sleep quality and quantity. There are enough studies that shows signs of decline in physical performance, hormonal balance, mental awareness, heart health and immunity when sleep duration is less than 7 hours.
Create a sleep routine by setting the sleep schedule first and stick with it. Sleep is a habit and because of that we all need to create a sleep routine of when to go to bed and when to wake up. To improve the sleep quality, you may want to keep the bedroom dark with temperature of about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. It will also help less lighting in the house especially 30-60 minutes prior to your bedtime. This will help our melatonin to start kicking in. Sleep itself may not enhance your metabolic rate but lack of sleep does have negative impact on a metabolic rate.
Check Yourself
These habits probably are something that you have heard and may have tried. If your current daily habit is not at the level that I have described above and wondering why you are not seeing results, then you will need to get back to improving those 3 daily habits.
Improving metabolism is not a complicated task, though it does require consistent effort.
Kota Shimada
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