Fitness expert Anu Yusuf takes you through the metabolic highs and lows

When it comes to looking slim and svelte, some know the importance of watching their diet and getting it right with exercise. For others, it is an ordeal — getting rid of love handles, bat wings or flabby upper thighs.

It’s not that they don’t want to make time for keep-fit activities, it’s just that they probably don’t know their muscle from fat. Or of ways to speed up their metabolism.

Weight-loss programmes offering a quickie are a-plenty — from the ‘flat-stomach-in-three-weeks programme’ to the ‘bikini-blitz diet’. When these programmes promise weight loss of around a kg a day, remember, you are not just losing fat, but muscle and water, too.

While some specialists concentrate on dietary habits, there are loads who swear by a precisely controlled exercise programme, some who give tips on organising your life, and yet others who see obesity as a psychological problem and offer help in this area. However, for successful long-term weight reduction, a combination of these is recommended.

So, to crunch off the weight and be a model of fitness, you must turn up your internal energy thermostat — in short your metabolism.

YOUR METAB
In order to understand why the body protects itself so strongly against any attack on its reserves requires some basic knowledge of the metabolic process. Your metabolism is the sum of the calorie-burning chemical changes that occur all over your body at any given moment.

In everyday language, metabolism is repeatedly mentioned in connection with speed: ‘He has a high metabolic rate’, ‘your metabolism will slow down with this medication’, etc. It is clear that the speed of the chemical processes in our body can vary. The fact that metabolism is subject to variation like this means that it is somewhat more difficult to embark on a specific weight-reduction programme.

The logic is clear: You absorb more energy-producing calories than needed and your weight increases; you absorb less and it goes down. But our metabolism also varies from person to person.

If the energy uptake drops, energy consumption will automatically slow down after some time and vice versa. But by how much it slows down or goes up will depend on the individual.

REV UP YOUR METABOLISM
Since our metabolic rate changes in reaction to our body weight, we should avoid activities that slow down our metabolism. There are three practical ways of stimulating the metabolism:

* Muscle building (hypertrophy)
* Physical activity
* Eating more or eating more frequently

There are possible signs that tell us that our metabolic rate has dropped — lethargy, feeling cold, dry skin, a slow pulse and low blood pressure. And if you feel any of these, don’t consider extreme options to raise your metabolic rate — like cutting down on your sleep, exposing yourself to cold, increasing the consumption of coffee and nicotine, and doping.

While drugs speed up the metabolism by stimulating the central nervous system, they come with serious side effects. So keep to these healthy ways to recharge your batteries.

Muscle Building