When people struggle to lose weight they often complain about having a “slow metabolism.”
Basically, the term metabolism refers to all the chemical processes that your body undergoes every day in order to keep you alive. Each day your body converts the calories in your food into energy and manufactures specialized chemicals to help your cells that your cells do their job; these are known as metabolic processes. Your body performs hundreds of these processes every day, which make up your metabolism.
The number of calories a person burns just lounging on a couch is widely estimated to be around 70 percent of all the calories needed per day. If you want to lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than your body shows it’s burning.
But how do you know how many calories you need?
The first step is to accurately determine your resting metabolic rate. While there are predictive formulas that are widely used, they can be inaccurate when compared to actual testing. According to korr.com, even the best equations are only within 10 percent of measured results, meaning that a person who may need 2,000 calories a day could be incorrectly consuming 2,200 calories a day.
While that may not seem like much, over the course of a year that would result in that person adding 21 pounds!
To learn more about the benefits of accurately determining your resting metabolic rate, here are answers, courtesy of korr.com, to some frequently asked questions.
What is Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)?
Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the measurement of how much food, or energy, is required to maintain basic body functions such as heartbeat, breathing, and maintenance of body heat while you are in a state of rest. That energy is expressed in calories per day. So an RMR test shows how many calories you burn at rest, doing nothing more than sitting in a chair.
How Does Metabolic Testing Work?
Indirect calorimetry (a measurement of metabolic rate) relies on the fact that burning 1 calorie (Kilocalorie) requires 208.06 milliliters of oxygen. Because of this very direct relationship between caloric burn and oxygen consumed, measurements of oxygen uptake (VO2) and caloric burn rate are virtually interchangeable.
Oxygen uptake requires a precise measurement of the volume of expired air and of the concentrations of oxygen in the inspired and expired air. The process requires that all of the air a person breathes out be collected and analyzed while they rest quietly.
Why Test RMR for Weight Loss?
Can You Boost Your Metabolic Rate?
In addition to understanding your caloric needs, you can also help increase your metabolic rate by:
To learn more about how a Resting Metabolism Rate can help you lose weight, or to schedule your test, contact AMP Fitness at 216-831-3674 or email us at info@ampfitness.com.
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