Metabolism 101: What Actually Controls Your Daily Energy Burn

As much of the nation prepares for a winter cold blast and icy onslaught, what better time to talk about your Metabolism and what makes up your daily energy burn, because trust me, you’re going to want to keep the calories this weekend!

Metabolism is one of the most misunderstood, yet overused concepts in health and fitness. I hear commentary all the time about metabolism’s “speeding up” or being “boosted” or the variety of supplements and diets to “fix it.” But few people truly understand what metabolism actually is, or what controls it. The truth is, it’s far more interesting, and far more empowering that most people realize.

Your metabolism isn’t some mysterious whysmical force that’s outside your control, but rather a dynamic and adaptable system that responds to your behavior, environment, and overall physiology. When you understand how it works, you gain the ability to influence it in meaningful ways that can help you achieve and sustain your health and fitness goals.

What is your Metabolism, really??

Your metabolism is the sum of all the chemical reactions in your body that keeps you alive and functional. It includes everything from breathing to digestion, to muscle repair. When people talk about metabolism in the health and fitness space, it’s usually regarding daily energy expenditure, or more specifically, the number of calories your body burns each day. So let’s break it down further and talk specifically at this.

Your daily energy burn so to speak is made up of four major components:

1. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

2. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)

3. Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT)

4. Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)

Your BMR is the amount of energy your body uses to stay alive at rest and accounts for around 60–70% of your daily caloric expenditure. This includes breathing, circulation, brain function, hormone production, cell repair and organ function among others. It’s highly influenced by your lean body mass as well as other factors such as age, sex, genetics, hormones and overall body size. There are a couple of big takeaways from just this information. Many of these factors we have little control over, however we can change our body mass and we can change our lean body mass. Increasing our body mass causes our BMR to increase and subsequently, decreasing our body mass, decreases our BMR — makes sense, we have more or less energy demands to keep us alive at rest. However, what is essential for you to know is that lean body mass is very metabolically active and if we can increase this, we increase our BMR, irrespective of overall body mass changes.

This is why strength training is one of the most powerful tools for improving metabolism.

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) is the amount of energy utilized through all daily movement that isn’t formal exercise. Think about activities such as walking around, standing, fidgeting, clearning, doing yard work, or taking the stairs. NEAT can vary dramatically between individuals but it is also one of the most adaptable parts of your metabolism. Smaill changes in daily movement can have a big impact of your daily energy expenditure. Aiming for 7000–10000 steps per day is a great start to increasing this component of your metabolism.

Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT) includes all intentional exercise, such as strength training, running, biking, group fitness and sports. It is typically the smallest slice of the pie as we may not do intentional exercise every day and we also exercise at varying levels of intensity and duration which heavily influences caloric expenditure. Most people overestimate how much exercise contributes to daily energy expnditure because it can feel draining and fatiguing, but that doesn’t always translate to a large caloric expenditure. However, one type of exercise can play an important role over others. You guessed it, strength training. Strength training can increase residual energy expenditure post-exercise more than other types of exercise types. And if we can do this consistently, and at an appropriate magnitude of effort, we build lean body mass which as mentioned earlier, gives us a nice metabolic bump.

The Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) is the amount of energy used by your body to digest, absorb and process food and can account for anywhere between 5–15% of your daily energy expenditure. But did you know that the quality of the foods you choose have different thermic effects? Protein has around a 20–30% thermic effect as compared to carbs (5–10%) and fats (0–3%), which means that increasing your intake a whole, lean proteins will require your body to expend more energy to process foods than carbs and fats, which effectively supports overall weight loss and metabolic health.

Now that we have borken down the key components, let’s take a closer look at what truly influences your metabolism over the short and long term. Lean body mass (muscle) plays a vital role in our metabolism, the more you have, the higher your metabolic demands. Daily movement is the most controllable part of your metabolism, and small changes done repeadly can have a massive impact. Consuming meals packed with protein is going to increase your thermic effect of food, but also increase your feeling of fullness (satiety) longer, which also supporting the lean tissue growth you are obtaining from lifting weights. Hormones and physiological stress can negatively impact your metabolism and factors such as chronic stress, poor sleep and under-eating will contribute to your body reducing the energy demand of it’s daily needs. Age and genetics do play a role, but we don’t have the capability of specifically controlling these, however we do for factors that are related, such as strength training, daily activity, improved sleep and reduced stress are all factors that have been shown to slow the aging process as well as maximizing your genetic potential.

Your metabolism isn’t something you’re stuck with, and it’s not broken.

What it is, is adaptable and this is what you need to take advatage of.

One last thing, I often get asked about the impact of genetics. Genetics is certainly involved in your metabolism response, but they are not an excuse of why things can’t change. It often means you may not have figured out the best recipe for your adaptations. I can tell you though, that if you increase daily movement and increase your approach and consistency to strength training, these are going to put you in a much better chance of response than anything else related to metabolism.

Have a great day

Coach Dan

With over 25 years of experience in health and fitness, Dr. Dan helps people balance their nutrition and lifestyle to foster better habits and achieve results. If you’d like to receive more stories, subscribe to get access to these and more.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.