We always hear people talking about metabolism but what exactly does it mean? Metabolism is simply the number of calories your body burns each day. Boosting metabolism has become a very controversial topic. Did you know that the true source of the majority of your metabolism, and the majority of the calories burned during the duration of your day, comes from your internal organs? When I say your internal organs, I am talking about from your brain and from your digestive system.

If you laid in bed and were a young active male with muscle mass, your basal metabolic rate would be around 1500 calories. So that’s what you would burn just lying in bed. It is important to realise that even if you sat on the couch the entire day, and didn't do anything, you’re still going to easily burn over 1,000 calories. If you are a bigger person, you are going to burn even more calories.

You can’t increase that through any type of activity.You see, many people think that most of their metabolism comes from exercise. But that’s not true. It’s just a small percentage. Look at it like this-even if you went and burned 500 calories through an intense workout, that’s only a 25% increase in your overall basal metabolic rate. The Basal Metabolic Rate comes mainly from your organs. Many people don’t understand this process. In essence, the truth about whether or not you can actually boost your metabolism significantly is doubtful.

Short Term Research

A lot of the metabolism confusion comes from short-term research. So a lot of these supplement stimulants claim to be able to increase your metabolism by 80 calories per day. But what’s really going to be the results if you take these stimulants for 3 months? Your body has an incredible ability to adapt. The human body is very resilient. It changes in response to the stimulus like we see when we train. In other words, will your body still be burning those extra 80 calories per day, from the supplement 30 days from now? More than likely not.

Your body will regulate itself, causing much less of an effect. All these studies you see about boosting metabolism are very short term. So while it might work for two weeks, more than likely 12 weeks down the road these supplements will be non-effective. You will be hard pressed to find any 12 week research studies in regards to metabolism.

How Do You Increase Your Metabolism?

Sorry, but this is probably not the answer you are looking for. But I am just stating the facts. You really can’t increase it too much. You really can’t increase your metabolism too much unless you add some lean muscle mass. Even with an increase in lean muscle mass, it’s very minimal increase. So there’s really not a great way to dramatically increase it. The best thing we can do is make sure we’re staying out of the way from actually slowing our metabolism.

How can your metabolism slow down?

Well being inactive and eating processed foods will most certainly decrease your overall metabolism. We want to stay active, eat whole natural foods. Just be sure to provide the right opportunity and environment for your metabolism to operate properly.