Metabolic Health Determines You Being Overweight

Everyday we turn on the television, flip through a magazine or check out a website and find someone talking about the 'metabolism'. But what do we actually know about it? And how do we know if is performing at the right level that it is supposed to. And most importantly, can we actually speed it up if it isn't?
Our metabolism is essentially our body's engine and is responsible for many functions among them turning the food we eat into fuel or energy so we can move around and remain alive. Every decade as we get older we lose around 10% of our metabolic power.
Unfortunately this starts to happen from the mid 20's and the reason for this is that we lose around one half pound of muscle tissue each year because we do not do enough strength building and maintaining activity to retain our strength.
Thanks to that inactive desk job, family commitments, and addicting line up of must-see television programs our activity levels drop off drastically as we get older and most of us are doing way less physical activity than we should be. The outcome of this usually is that our body composition changes unfavorably (body fat/muscle ratio) and we become overweight. This exposes us to many diseases and health risks as well as faster aging.
Although we can not actually put our hands on our metabolism and turn it up like a thermostat, the good news is that by using proper exercise and nutrition strategies we can speed it up. The speed of our metabolism plays a major role in body weight control and is the difference between becoming overweight or staying at a normal body weight.
When you understand how they fit together it will give you access to more effective tools to lose excess body fat. The biggest tool of all that has the most impact on your metabolism is to get started on a proper exercise program made up of mostly strength training exercise. If you have not done anything like this before make sure you seek the help of a fitness professional so you start receiving your results as quickly as possible.
You may be young and have not yet experienced the downward slide of your metabolism and the corresponding increase in body weight, which is great. But it is important to start today to avoid waking up 10 years down the road and wondering what happened to your youth and vitality along with your slim body.
If you are older and your current lifestyle has negatively impacted your body, strength, health and well-being, get back on track today and take control of how you will continue to age. Making sure you have a healthy metabolism has many benefits that will help you maintain a high level of wellness throughout the years.
You will be able to handle stress, be resistant to sickness and disease and enjoy physical vitality and mental vigor along with lots of energy and stamina to enjoy your life as you work, play, eat, and sleep with ease. But allow your metabolism to slow down and become impaired like a dwindling old engine and it will interfere with your good health.

Fit Over 40 and Growing Younger

We are living longer these days. They say that 40 is the new 30. New evidence now shows that exercise can actually reverse aging. This is great news for all those who want to keep fit over 40.
Because we are living longer these days, it is imperative that we keep fit and healthy as we age. It is no fun living to a ripe old age but suffering with all kinds of problems. Many baby boomers go to the gym in the hope that it will do them good, but now we have evidence that exercise definitely has a beneficial effect on health and longevity.
The study found that exercising a few times a week not just 'slows' or 'repairs' but actually 'reverses' aging in human muscle tissue. So if you keep fit and you are over 40, you actually reverse the aging process.
One of the signs of aging is weakening of the skeletal muscles and the increasing dysfunction of the mitochondria.
Mitochondria is the energy factory of the cells. As we age, experts say that our muscles begin to waste away (sarcopenia)
You can read the full report on this study in the publication Plos One, an online publication. A research team in Canada, under Dr Simon Melov from Ontario took one group of young adults and another group of adults over 65. They first tested muscle strength and then took skeletal muscle biopsies from both groups.
The older adults then undertook a 26-week whole body resistance exercise training programme, that involved stretching and other weight-bearing exercise on gym equipment.
The astonishing thing about this study is that after just six months of resistance training, test subjects showed a 'reversal of most of the genes affected by age' in muscle tissue.
It was found that the subjects;
Increased strength by over 20%
Their genes literally reverted back to the same markers as younger genes after only six months.
The other interesting point is that at the beginning, the older subjects were about 60% weaker than the younger members of the study.
However after just 6 months, they were only 38% weaker.
No doubt if they were to continue the regime they would be just as strong if not stronger than the younger subjects.
This is great news for anyone who wants to be fit over 40. Not only will you feel better, but you will also be increasing your longevity and level of fitness. Instead of resigning yourself to aging and losing fitness levels, you can now be confident that you are doing yourself good and literally becoming younger as you grow older.

Your Metabolic Health

Our modern world with its increasing inactivity levels and sedentary living means our metabolic health is on very shaky ground. Two thirds of the world's population is now either overweight or obese and the related health problems have increased at an epidemic rate over the last 20 years
The term metabolic health or 'metabolism' is essentially the body's engine and refers to the process of breaking down food and converting it to energy. But it also covers the whole range of biochemical processes that take place within the human body. These processes that keep us healthy rely on a healthy interaction among organs like the thyroid, liver, pancreas, and adrenal glands.
When these elements are stressed or out of balance our metabolic health suffers and can cause our body fat levels, blood sugar (glucose) and blood fats (cholesterol) to rise to unhealthy levels. This can put us in the firing line for some killer diseases especially the 'big three' heart disease, cancer and diabetes and a host of others.
One of the conditions seriously affecting our metabolic health is being overweight or obese which is considered a metabolic disorder. This is because the human body is not designed to carry a large amount of excessive weight and still function healthfully.
The more overweight you are and the more your weight fluctuates, the more stress is placed on your metabolic system. It is very important not to go on and off diets if you struggle with being overweight. This means your metabolism can become more and more sluggish and confused which will make it more difficult to reboot it and lose weight for the long haul.
When your metabolic health deteriorates you can end up with a combination of health conditions linked together by a low metabolism. One of the easy ways to tell if you are at risk is if your waistline measures over 40 inches for men and over 36 inches for women.
But the good news is with the right exercise program and eating plan in place you can reverse this situation, lose excess weight, improve your health and reduce your risk of serious disease. First, your exercise program needs to be mostly strength training exercise. Your muscles are where fat is burned for energy and becoming stronger and toning them up means more fat will be burned allowing you to lose weight.
Also the problem of the lowered metabolic rate will be addressed. More toned muscle tissue on your body will increase your metabolism because muscle is what drives it. This is what will give you greater fat burning round the clock.
It is important to take note that long slow 'cardio' type activity - like walking, jogging or cycling will not work your muscular system through its ranges of movement under a load so do not waste your time and energy with ineffective exercise. See a fitness professional to set up your program for the best possible results.
Your eating plan should consist of 5-7 small meals spread throughout the day every 2-3 hours. These meals should contain at least 20 grams of protein and the balance made up of raw and cooked vegetables. Ditch the processed foods along with flour and sugar and try and eat mainly natural whole foods. These are foods like an orange, a carrot, a handful of almonds, a slab of grass fed beef or free range eggs. Try and eat foods that don't come in pretty boxes with little or no nutritional value.
Slowly but surely these two things, your proper exercise program and proper eating plan will restore metabolic health. You can not lose weight to become healthy; you need to get healthy to lose weight. Only when everything is in balance will the magic of fat loss happen. You have to stop freaking out your body with poor exercise and eating habits so get these things right and everything else will fall into place.