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Hence, you've
likely heard of the phrase metabolic process
used
synonymously with the term metabolism, because
they both mean
the same thing.
The
Medical Mumbo Jumbo
This isn't a complicated medical text (which
should be great news
to most of you!), and so we don't need to spend
an unnecessary
amount of time and space focusing on the layered
complexity of the
human body and its extraordinary intelligence.
Yet
without drilling deeply into medical details
-- which are not
relevant for our general understanding purposes
-- it's helpful to
briefly look at the biological mechanisms behind
metabolism.
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Metabolism, as mentioned above, is the process
of transforming
food (e.g. nutrients) into fuel (e.g. energy).
The body uses this
energy to conduct a vast array of essential
functions.
In
fact, your ability to read this page literally
is driven by your
metabolism.
If
you had no metabolism that is, if you
had no metabolic process
that was converting food into energy then
you wouldn't be able to
move.
In
fact, long before you realized that you couldn't
move a finger or
lift your foot, your internal processes would
have stopped; because
the basic building blocks of life circulating
blood, transforming
oxygen into carbon dioxide, expelling potentially
lethal wastes
through the kidneys and so on all of these
depend on metabolism.
Keep
this in mind the next time you hear someone
say that they
have a slow metabolism.
While
they may struggle with unwanted weight gain
due to
metabolic factors, they certainly have a functioning
metabolism.
If
they didn't, they wouldn't even be able to speak
(because that,
too, requires energy that comes from, you guessed
it: metabolism!).
It's
also interesting to note that, while we conveniently
refer to the
metabolic process as if it were a single function,
it's really a catch-
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all term for countless functions that are taking
place inside the
body. Every second of every minute of every
day of your life
even, of course, when you sleep numerous
chemical conversions
are taking place through metabolism, or metabolic
functioning.
In
a certain light, the metabolism has been referred
to as a
harmonizing process that manages to achieve
two critical bodily
functions that, in a sense, seem to be at odds
with each other.
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Anabolism and Catabolism
The first function is creating tissue and cells.
Each moment, our
bodies are creating more cells to replace dead
or dysfunctional
cells.
For
example, if you cut your finger, your body (if
it's functioning
properly) will begin without even wasting
a moment or asking your
permission the process of creating skin
cells to clot the blood and
start the healing process. This creation process
is indeed a
metabolic response, and is called anabolism.
On
the other hand, there is the exact opposite
activity taking place
in other parts of the body. Instead of building
cells and tissue
through metabolism, the body is breaking down
energy so that the
body can do what it's supposed to do.
For
example, as you aerobically exercise, your body
temperature
rises as your heart beat increases and remains
with a certain range.
As
this happens, your body requires more oxygen;
and as such, your
breathing increases as you intake more H2O.
All of this, as you can
imagine, requires additional energy.
After
all, if your body couldn't adjust to this enhanced
requirement
for oxygen (both taking it in and getting rid
of it in the form of
carbon dioxide), you would collapse!
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Presuming,
of course, that you aren't overdoing it, your
body will
instead begin converting food (e.g. calories)
into energy. And this
process, as you know, is a metabolic process,
and is called
catabolism.
So
as you can see, the metabolism is a constant
process that takes
care of two seemingly opposite function: anabolism
that uses
energy to create cells, and catabolism that
breaks down cells to
create energy.
Indeed,
it's in this way that the metabolism earns its
reputation as
a harmonizer. It brings together these apparently
conflicting
functions, and does so in an optimal way that
enables the body to
create cells as needed, and break them down,
again as needed.
Metabolism
and Weight Loss
By now, you already have a sense of how metabolism
relates to
weight loss (catabolic metabolism, or breaking
cells down and
transforming them into energy).
To
understand this process even more clearly, we
can introduce a
very important player in the weight loss game:
the calorie.
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Calories
Calories are simply units of measure. They aren't
actually things in
and of themselves; they are labels for other
things, just like how an
inch really isn't anything, but it measures
the distance between two
points.
So
what do calories measure?
Easy:
they measure energy.
Yup,
the evil calorie the bane of the dieter's
existence is really
just a 3-syllable label for energy.
And
it's important to highlight this, because the
body itself, despite
its vast intelligence (much of which medical
science cannot yet
understand, only appreciate in awe) does not
really do a very
intelligent job of distinguishing good energy
from bad.
Actually,
to be blunt, the body doesn't care about where
the
energy comes from. Let's explore this a little
more, because it's
very important to the overall understanding
of how to boost your
metabolism, particularly when we look at food
choices.
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In our choice-laden grocery stores, with dozens
of varieties of foods
hundreds, perhaps there seems to
be a fairly clear awareness of
what's good food, and what's bad or junk food.
For
example, we don't need a book to remind us that,
all else being
equal, a plum is a good food, whereas a tub
of thick and creamy
double-fudge ice cream is a bad food.
Not
bad tasting, of course; but, really, you won't
find many fit
people eating a vat of ice cream a day, for
obvious reasons. So
what does this have to do with calories and
energy?
It's
this: while you and I can evaluate our food
choices and say that
something (like a plum) is a healthy source
of energy, and
something else (like a tub of ice cream) is
an unhealthy source of
energy, the body doesn't evaluate. Really.
It
sounds strange and amazing, but the body really
doesn't care. To
the body, energy is energy. It takes whatever
it gets, and doesn't
really know that some foods are healthier than
others. It's kind of
like a garbage disposal: it takes what you put
down it, whether it
should go down or not.
So
let's apply this to the body, and to weight
gain. When the body
receives a calorie which, as we know,
is merely a label for energy
it must do something with that energy.
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In other words, putting all other nutrients
and minerals aside, if a
plum delivers 100 calories to the body, it has
to accept those 100
calories. The same goes for 500 calories from
a (small) tub of ice
cream: those 500 calories have to be dealt with.
Now,
the body does two things to that energy: it
either metabolizes
it via anabolism, or it metabolizes it via catabolism.
That is, it will
either convert the energy (calories) into cells/tissue,
or it will use
that energy (calories) to break down cells.
Now
the link between calories/energy, metabolism,
and weight loss
becomes rather clear and direct.
When
there is an excess of energy, and the body can't
use this
energy to deal with any needs at the time, it
will be forced to
create cells with that extra energy. It has
to.
It
doesn't necessarily want to, but after figuring
out that the energy
can't be used to do anything (such as help you
exercise or digest
some food), it has to turn it into cells through
anabolism.
And
those extra cells? Yup, you guessed it: added
weight!
In
a nutshell (and nuts have lots of calories by
the way, so watch
out and eat them in small portions...), the
whole
calorie/metabolism/weight gain thing is really
just about excess
energy.
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What
is Metabolism?