

A pound of muscle can burn up to 20 calories a day, whereas a pound of fat can burn only five calories. “Building and maintaining lean muscle tissue is important,” says Dr Kinsella. Research published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, however, shows that having a small meal or snack every few hours keeps your metabolism whirring away, so you burn more calories over the course of a day. “When you eat large meals with many hours in between, your metabolism slows down,” says Dr Kinsella. Little and oftenīecause of TEF, eating more often can help you lose weight. Starving yourself won’t burn calories regularly eating meals of the right kind will. This is called the thermic effect of food, or TEF.” “When you eat food it’s digested, absorbed, transported and stored – and all of these processes use calories. “As well as your metabolic rate, another factor that determines how many calories you burn is thermogenesis, or the processing of food,” says Dr Kinsella. Muscles, including the brain, burn up to 300 calories every day.”īody composition changes, activity levels and diet can influence that burn rate, too. “Even when you’re resting, your body needs energy to function, grow and repair. “In general, men tend to have less body fat and more muscle than women, which means men burn more calories,” explains Dr Martin Kinsella, hormone specialist with. How that metabolic rate works, and how much energy it uses itself, is determined by a number of factors including your size, build, gender and age. The whole process is known as your basal metabolic rate.” You need that energy to move, digest food, keep warm, breathe and even think. “On the most basic level,” explains Dr Michael Mosley, metabolism specialist with, “it is the process by which your body turns what you eat and drink into energy. That said, it’s also a word often used but poorly understood. It energises 37 trillion cells, powers all your vital organs and ensures your immune system functions to keep you alive. Your metabolism, a 24/7 machine, is the sum of all the chemical reactions in your body.
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Learn how to speed up your metabolism and accelerate fat loss with these science-backed strategies.
