Randy's Health Columns

Resting Metabolism Rate
By Randy Coleman The truth is always harder to swallow than a French fry or a mouthful of fettucini alfredo. You’ve crunched the numbers and your Body Mass Index and Hip/Waist Ratio tell you the same thing: your health is at-risk because of your weight. How can that be the case? You don’t devour a gallon of ice cream every night or scarf down 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day like those people on reality tv. You’re just a “normal” person with “normal” eating habitats. But if you’re eating “normally” and still packing on the pounds, there has to some sort of problem. Right? The first problem is that “normal” doesn’t mean healthy anymore. Today, two out of three Americans are overweight or obese, which makes “normal” unhealthy. People with healthy weights are a minority. So, as counterintuitive as it may seem, you want to be abnormal. Your goal is to not look – or feel – like everyone else. The second problem is that most of us want to blame our health problems on forces beyond our control. One common culprit is the dreaded “slow metabolism.” While “slow metabolism” sounds good, it doesn’t always hold up under close scrutiny. Let’s take a reality check. Metabolism is the whole range of biochemical processes that occur within us (or any living organism), but, most commonly, we use it to describe the breakdown of food and its transformation into energy. Your resting metabolic rate is the amount of energy, measured in calories, it takes to keep your basic body systems, such as circulation, respiration and digestion, functioning throughout the day. The average female, over the age of 18, burns a little less than 1 calorie per minute, while the average male, over the age of 18, burns just over 1 calorie per minute; therefore, the average resting metabolic rate for females ranges between 1,200 calories and 1,500 calories per day, and the average resting metabolic rate for males ranges between 1,500 calories and 1,800 calories per day. Of course, there are a few individuals who will fall out of the range, but the likelihood of you being one of them – and not already knowing it -- is very small. Generally, people whose metabolism is significantly higher or lower than average exhibit other symptoms that lead to a specific diagnosis and subsequent treatment. While it’s tempting to blame extra weight on a slow metabolism, your metabolic rate actually increases as your weight does. Instead of having a slower metabolic rate than the average person, yours is probably higher. Why? Fat is a living tissue and the body has to work harder to provide basic life functions to sustain it. It is true that resting rate of metabolism can slow as we age, but the changes are not dramatic. For instance, if your resting metabolic rate is 1,800 when you’re 20, it may have slowed to 1,700 when you’re 70. It will not have plummeted to 1,000. In this regard, metabolism is similar to height. If you’re 6’2” when you’re 20, you may lose an inch or two by the time you’re 70, but you won’t be 5’2”. The bottom line is that metabolism is not the reason that most people develop a muffin top or a spare tire. Most overweight people take in more energy than they burn. If you overfill your gas tank, the extra gas pours on the ground and the energy is lost. If you overeat, the extra calories are converted to fat and the energy is stored on your body. You wouldn’t purposely overfill your car. When it comes to weight loss, you have to stop over feeding your body if you want it to perform optimally.