Metabolic Rate: Effects on Diet and Health

   In today's diet-driven society, it's common to blame your failure to lose weight on a "slow metabolism". Metabolism is the process that your body uses to convert nutritional calories into energy the body can use to maintain daily living/functioning.  It greatly affects how efficiently your body burns energy and in this way, affects how much weight you can lose and how easily you can lose it. Besides genetics, the three main factors that affect metabolic rate are: 

·      Age-your metabolism naturally decreases as you enter the mid-twenty/early-thirty year olds range

·      Sex-men usually have higher metabolisms than women.

·      Body Composition-having a lean body composition correlates to a high metabolic rate.

Although most of these factors can not be changed, there are other ways to control the rate of your metabolism and that is what this blog will discuss.  There are many different techniques that can be easily implemented into anyones daily lives, and make a huge change in the amount of energy your body has and the amount that is burns each day.  Everything from portion size and meal frequency, to food habits and physical activity affect a person's metabolic rate; even the smallest thing like drinking a large, cold glass of water in the morning can make a subtle difference in metabolic speed.  It's important to make the public aware of these simple, cheap techniques, as well as information surrounding the overall reduction that some diets have on metabolic rate.  I look forward to doing research on this topic and receiving advise and criticism from you all.