Getting fit, Staying Fit

Your metabolism is the amount of energy in calories that your body burns in order to maintain its weight. Whether you’re sleeping, running, sitting, standing, riding in a car or eating a bowl of chocolate fudge ice cream, your body is constantly burning calories in order to keep you going. Think of it as a fire within you, burning your fat and food away. No, sorry but you won’t burn enough calories chewing your chocolate fudge ice cream to cancel out the calories you just took in by eating that bowl of ice cream. It would be nice if it worked that way, but it doesn’t.  Get any group of women together, and even some men, get them talking on the topic of their metabolism and you’ll hear moaning and groaning and complaining about how their metabolism is so slow, that when they were younger they could eat anything they wanted to and not gain weight but now if they simply *think* about a piece of cheesecake they put five pounds on. 

It’s a sad but true fact of life that as we age our metabolism slows down. It doesn’t stop (although at times we might feel as though it has) but it does change. The reason for this is because we have more lean muscle mass at 20 than we do at 70, and lean muscle mass is what helps burn calories. Some people have higher metabolisms than others and are able to burn off the calories they eat and never gain an ounce. Others have metabolisms slower than a slug and everything they eat seems to stick with them and not get burned off. No two people are alike in the calories they burn and the rate of their metabolism