Small partners who lose weight should be familiar with the concept of "basal metabolism". Because raising it really allows you to lie down also increases energy expenditure.
Therefore, many friends are trying all kinds of ways to improve the basal metabolism, such as the most common things we hear about are muscle training, drinking hot water, drinking coffee, eating peppers, etc.
Why does increasing basal metabolism also increase energy expenditure? Which method really improves basal metabolism? What are the common sense and misunderstandings about basal metabolism? This article will come to the system to talk about.
Our daily energy expenditure consists of three parts, namely basal metabolism, physical activity and food heat effect. [1]
Basal metabolism refers to the energy required to maintain the most basic life activities of the human body, such as heartbeat and breathing, which accounts for 60% to 70% of daily energy consumption, and is the head of energy consumption.
Physical activity accounts for about 15% to 30% of daily energy expenditure, compared with basal metabolism, this proportion is much lower, the key is to be tired and tired activities, many people are too busy to take time to exercise.
Food heat effect refers to the increased energy consumption due to eating, the food heat effect of daily mixed meals accounts for only about 10% of energy intake, and adjusting the diet structure has little impact on it.
In this way, you will find that if you can improve the basal metabolism of the head of the energy consumption, you can really not change the diet, do not exercise desperately, and increase the energy consumption when lying down.
Clinically, indirect calorimetry can accurately measure your basal metabolism.
How to measure it?
The night before the measurement needs to eat light and digestible food, but also to reduce the mental burden, sleep well for more than 8 hours, can not do physical and mental work after getting up in the morning, do not wash, do not eat breakfast, lie flat on the examination bed to start measuring, the room temperature when measuring is generally about 20 degrees Celsius.
As for the basal metabolism displayed on our body fat scale, it is estimated according to the data such as height, weight, age, etc., using formulas, that is to say, it is really inaccurate.
However, if you have been weighed for a long time, it is a fixed time and a fixed state, such as going to the small toilet after getting up in the morning, in the same room, there is no water under the feet, then you can accurately judge whether the basal metabolism has increased or decreased through the comparison before and after.
Basal metabolism is related to age, sex, endocrinology, stress state, and body composition.
1, with the increase of age, the basal metabolism will decrease, we can not do anti-aging growth, so this is not expected.
2, men are higher than women's basal metabolism, in order to lose weight to do sex reassignment surgery is too exaggerated, this can not be counted on.
3, hyperthyroidism can improve basal metabolism, but this is a pathology, so you can't beat its idea.
4, stress states such as stress, bad mood will improve the basal metabolism, but stress and bad mood is also easy to let people eat more.
5. Increasing the proportion of muscle can improve basal metabolism.
This is because the lean tissue of the human body (including muscles, heart, liver and kidneys, etc.) is a metabolically active tissue, and the energy consumed accounts for 70% to 80% of the energy consumption of the basal metabolism, so in the case of the same weight, the basal metabolism of thin and muscular people is higher than that of short and fat people.
Seeing this sentence, do you particularly want to build muscle to improve basal metabolism?
Muscle building can indeed improve basal metabolism, but the effect is often exaggerated.
Because in lean tissues, organs such as the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys are the main force of energy consumption, and the energy consumed by muscles is only a little.
1 pound of muscle consumes only 6 kilocalories a day, and Michael Colgan, a consultant to many American Olympians, believes that after hard training, the maximum amount of muscle gained each year is only 8 pounds.
If 8 pounds of muscle can still be maintained, the increased energy expenditure per day is 48 kcal.
Compared with athletes who train hard, the amount of muscle gain is much less, so the basal metabolism of muscle training is also more limited.
It can be seen that you can't expect to increase your basal metabolism too much, but refining muscle itself consumes energy and can make you look tighter, so you have to refine.
In addition to muscle training, we are also looking forward to eating and drinking something to improve the basal metabolism, let's see if there is any reliable.
Some people say that "drinking hot water will increase the body temperature, and the body temperature will increase with the increase of metabolism.".
In fact, the increase in body temperature will indeed increase metabolism, such as when you are sick with fever, metabolism will increase, but drinking hot water has almost no effect on the body temperature of healthy people, so the impact on basal metabolism is also minimal, so what about drinking cold water?
A study published in the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism experimented with drinking distilled water at room temperature, saline at room temperature, and ice water at 3°C.
The results show that whether it is drinking distilled water at room temperature or saline, it cannot increase metabolism. However, drinking ice water at a low temperature of 3 ° C can increase metabolism by 4.5%, and it can last for 60 minutes. The reason is that people are thermostatic animals, and when they drink cold water, the body will consume more calories in order to raise the water temperature to the same as the body temperature.
However, the energy consumption increased by drinking cold water is very small, such as women's basal metabolism is about 1200 ~ 1300kcal, drinking cold water can increase the metabolic rate by 4.5%, and it can be calculated to consume more calories of 54kcal ~ 58.5kcal, which is actually not high.
Therefore, if you are losing weight, if you want to increase the consumption of this calorie, then you can drink cold water. But if drinking cold water can cause stomach upset, don't try it.
Limited effect.
It is true that the caffeine in coffee is helpful for improving basal metabolism, but the effect is limited. [2]
Therefore, there is no need to drink a lot of coffee in order to improve metabolism, because drinking too much may make your heart beat faster, panic, dizziness, and drinking after 3 pm may also affect sleep.
The "Scientific Consensus on Coffee and Health" led by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that the average adult should control caffeine within 400 mg per day.
How much coffee do you have to drink?
The Starbucks Cup (473 ml) American contains 225 mg of caffeine, so the American cup is limited to 1.5 cups a day.
However, for people who need exercise during weight loss, proper coffee can make you energetic, improve exercise endurance, and thus consume more calories, which is also very helpful for weight loss.
It has some effect, but eating it incorrectly will increase fattening.
One study showed that eating chili peppers made you consume an extra 10kcal per meal; another study showed that eating spicy peppers made you consume an extra 50kcal per day. [3、4]
It can be seen that eating spicy does help to improve metabolism and can help lose weight. But eating spicy can promote appetite, so that you eat more, but you are fat. The point is that spicy dishes are generally accompanied by high fat and high calories, such as spicy chicken, minced pepper fish head, boiled meat slices, spicy hot pot and so on.
As we all know, Sichuan is a typical spicy-loving area, and surveys show that in 2010, the overweight rate of adults aged 20-69 in Sichuan was as high as 30%[5], and the overweight rate of adults in 2012 was only 30.1%.
Therefore, even if eating spicy can improve a little metabolism, it does not mean that you can lose weight, but also have to be leisurely.
To sum up, in fact, there is nothing to eat that can be very helpful for improving the basal metabolism, but it is important to note that some practices will reduce the basal metabolism.
It is difficult to improve the basal metabolism, but you can avoid the reduction of the basal metabolism, how to do it?
Don't lose weight quickly[6, 7]
The faster you lose weight, the faster your basal metabolism drops.
After 7 and a half months, 14 contestants of the American reality show "Super Slimming King" lost 58.3± 24.9 kg of body weight, and their basal metabolism was reduced by an average of 600 kcal.
This reduction in basal metabolism means that at least 600 kcal is lost on diet and exercise every day to maintain weight.
But it is not easy to continue to do it, because rapid weight loss is likely to cause hormone disorders and make people eager to eat, so 13 of the 14 players have regained weight, and 4 of them are fatter than participating in the festival.
Some friends may say that they are losing weight and reducing their basal metabolism, so what can they do?
In fact, we all have a small weight base, rapid weight loss at most will lose one or two pounds, the reduction of basal metabolism will not be too much, so do not worry too much.
No way.
Taking young manual laborer women as an example, the daily energy need is 1800 kcal, the basic metabolism is calculated according to 70% of the energy, but only 1260 kcal, which is compared with 1800 kcal Compared with 540 kcal, it is easy to be hungry and difficult to adhere to.
Generally, we will recommend that female friends eat at least 1400 kcal of calories per day, or you don't need to pay attention to how many calories are consumed every day, as long as they are more reasonable than before, and their eating habits are healthier, they can eat enough and be thin.
How to judge whether your collocation is reasonable, whether your eating habits are healthy, see the article: reduce the fat that does not rebound once, and cultivate these 24 habits
With age, muscle loss of fat increases, muscle is a diligent guy, consume more energy, fat is a lazy guy, consume less energy, so the basal metabolism decreases year by year.
However, we can not exaggerate the decrease in basal metabolism caused by age, after the age of 30 every 10 years of basal metabolism is reduced by about 2%, after the age of 50 years, the basal metabolism will be reduced more.
If your basal metabolism before the age of 30 is 1300 kcal, then the basal metabolism at the age of 40 is about 1274 kcal, which is reduced by 26 kcal, think about eating 4 rolls of beef rolls is 90 kcal calories, is it embarrassed to complain that it is difficult to lose weight because of slow metabolism in age.
Hypothyroidism refers to hypothyroidism, a condition that causes a decrease in basal metabolism.
Therefore, hypothyroidism is usually related to weight gain, which generally makes people gain 5 to 10 pounds, that is, 4.5 to 9 pounds, of which patients with severe hypothyroidism tend to gain more weight.
However, this is not the same as the fat of ordinary people, ordinary people are fat mainly long fat, and hypothyroidism is mainly caused by water and salt in the body.
It should be emphasized that if the thyroid hormone control is within the normal range through treatment, the symptoms related to hypothyroidism have improved or even disappeared, that is, the weight has not decreased, it is definitely still eating less and moving less.
So don't blame fat on hypothyroidism, control the condition well, and control your mouth and open your legs.
brief summary:
There is no need to worry about how much your basal metabolism is, and there is no need to find ways to improve your basal metabolism, but don't lose weight very quickly, after all, compared to losing three or four pounds per month, losing more than 8 pounds per month will also lose more muscle, and the basal metabolism will also decrease more.
Today's Interaction: What other strange ways have you heard of to improve metabolism? Let's discuss it together.
bibliography:
Yang Yuexin,Ge Keyou. Chinese Nutrition Science Encyclopedia. People's Medical Publishing House. 2019
[2] R. Hursel et al. The effects of catechin rich teas and caffeine on energy expenditure and fat oxidation: a meta‐analysis, Obesity Reviews 12(7):e573-81 · March 2011
[3] Mary-Jon Ludy, et al.,The effects of hedonically acceptable red pepper doses on thermogenesis and appetite, Physiol Behav. 2011 Mar 1; 102(3-4): 251–258.
[4] Whiting S et al. Capsaicinoids and capsinoids. A potential role for weight management? A systematic review of the evidence. Appetite. 2012 Oct;59(2):341-8. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2012.05.015. Epub 2012 May 22.
Zhang Yihong, He Zhongtao, Li Ning, et al. Prevalence of BMI and overweight and obesity among people aged 20-69 in Sichuan Province[J]. Modern Preventive Medicine, 2012(16):4072-4075.
[6]https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/obesity/symptoms-causes/syc-20375742?p=1
[6]https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/expert-answers/metabolism/faq-20058346