Your metabolism and weight loss

 According to Donald Hensrud, M.D of the Mayo Clinic very few people have very low metabolisms.

Metabolism is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. Even when you're at rest, your body needs energy for functions such as breathing, circulating blood and repairing cells. The number of calories your body uses for these basic functions is known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR).
Several factors determine your basal metabolic rate:

• Your body size and composition. If you're larger or have more muscle mass, you will burn more calories, even at rest. (So overweight people are more likely to have a faster metabolic rate — not a slower one.)
• Your sex. If you're a man, you probably have less body fat and more muscle mass than a woman of the same age, so you burn more calories.
• Your age. As you get older, your muscle mass decreases, which slows down the rate at which you burn calories.

Rather than metabolism, factors more likely to contribute to weight gain include:

• Eating too many calories
• Getting too little exercise
• Genetics and family history
• Certain medications
• Unhealthy habits, such as skipping breakfast or not getting enough sleep

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Why we struggle so much to lose weight

This is my current dilemma - why am I struggling so much to lose weight?  So this blog post if directed at me - trying to come up with the answers - please chime in and HELP!

Part of the reason could be my age - 51. And yes, I have heard for years how much harder it is to lose as you age.  According to the Weight Management Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center “Your metabolism slows by 5 percent each decade."

So what is a women to do?a

   *Cut down calories slowly - no crash diets (I am aiming the finger directly at me)  crash diets slows your metabolism and you tend to gain back more fat and less muscle
   *Strength training - muscle burns more than fat
   *Switch up the exercise routine to challenge your muscles
   *Get plenty of sleep - Sleep deprivation increases the appetite-stimulating hormone, ghrelin, and decreases the satisfaction hormone, leptin, say researchers from the University of Chicago. In a study they conducted, tired volunteers craved more candy, cookies, chips, and pasta.

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Doing research for this post I just read - "Weight-loss research shows that American women gain an average of 16 pounds of body weight from age 25 to age 54. Only at about age 55 does their weight decline.  Men gain an average of 10 pounds of body weight from age 25 to age 45. They too begin to lose weight at about age 55. "  Hey so I just have 4 years to wait until I start losing :)


I have noticed that the older women in the family can't seem to eat as much food and tend to lose a little weight (and height :).  There is hope yet

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