What Is Metabolism

Metabolism is the amount of energy (calories) your body burns to maintain itself. Whether you are eating, drinking, sleeping, cleaning etc... your body is constantly burning calories to keep you going.


Metabolism is affected by your body composition. By body composition, I mean the amount of muscle you have versus the amount of fat. Muscle uses more calories to maintain itself than fat. People who are more muscular (and have a lower percentage of body fat) are said to have a higher metabolism than others that are less muscular. For example, let's say you have two people who are the exact same height and weight. One exercises on a regular basis with weights, in addition to aerobic exercise, and has a low percentage of body fat. The other never exercises and has a higher percentage of body fat. The first person who exercises will have a higher metabolism than the second person. What this basically means is that person #1's body will use more calories to sustain itself than person #2.

How To Increase Metabolism




Begin to exercise and stop dieting. If you've never exercised before, make sure you see a doctor before beginning a new exercise program (your problems with metabolism may be the result of a medical condition rather than your diet or lack of exercise).


You can increase your muscle mass by doing some type of resistance work (i.e. lifting weights, using exertubes, rubberbands, dynabands, hand weights etc...). You can also decrease your level of body fat by doing some type of aerobic exercise at least 3 days a week for longer than 20 minutes. By aerobic exercise, I mean an activity (such as walking, jogging, step aerobics, hi/low aerobics, biking, swimming etc...) that will increase your heartrate into the target zone and keep it there for the duration of the exercise session. You also need to eat! - Do not diet, just watch the types of foods you eat. Try to eat a diet that is lower in fat (check the labels on the foods that you buy).

Water-fasting is also one good way to increase your metabolism so go on, try it...:-)

Day 7

Had two meals and two litres of water. Will try to have, at most, one meal a day starting tomorrow.

Day 6

I’m still stressed out, still crying and my family is not even helping the situation, they are actually making it worse. I’ve had breakfast, three slices of bread with butter and a glass of Fanta. That was all I had today and I spent the whole night just sleeping.

Day 5

Not too much to write about today. I was stressed out big time and I was crying all day. I had three meals today and only 500ml of water. Back to crying again

Day 4

There was no weigh-in for me again this morning. Just like yesterday, I got too busy in the morning and left the house early and only came back around 11am and had my breakfast then. Soon after, I left the house again to take care of some business out of town. When I came back home around 2pm I was so tired and dehydrated because it’s so hot these days, it being summer. I had my second meal for the day between 3 and 4pm. I had rice with means and vegetables and a Fanta. Around 5pm I had a litre of water. I was going to have the other litre of water at 7pm but then there was a power cut and I just went to bed early.

Day 3

Woke up early to do chores around the house. I didn’t manage to weigh myself this morning because I was way too busy with other things that I totally forgot about it. Because I knew I was going to have a busy day, I decided to have my normal breakfast. Left the house in the early hours of the morning and was just busy, running around the whole day that I didn’t get to eat anything else or even drink water through-out the day. I only got to eat dinner later that evening and went to bed early because I was exhausted. I wasn’t happy at all with the fact that I didn’t drink any water at all because I know how good water is for me, especially when I want to lose weight.

Day 2

Day 1 (06 February 2012)

Time Wasted!

My Apologies

I just need to take this time to apologise to my followers for not updating this blog lately. It's because i have on proper internet connection at the moment. I am still writing, just saving it on my computer and i'll update all the entries at once when i finally get connectivity.

In the meantime, eat healthy and exercise!