How Does Metabolism Effect Your Weight
Metabolism is the process within the cells of the body that breaks down your food. Metabolism will effect your weight in several different ways.
How Does Metabolism Effect Your Weight
The complex chemical processes that are constantly taking place on a cellular level within the human body are a thing of wonder. Food and oxygen are constantly been broken down by enzymes in what are known as metabolic pathways. These are sequences of operations triggered by the enzymes whereby chemicals are transformed into work within the cell. One form of work done by the cells is to make new cells.
This duplication of cells within the body is how normal growth occurs. Your weight will increase as you grow. Even after growth ends in the human, cells continue to be replaced. Certain areas such as muscles will add cells and also weight. In most cases, these weight changes caused by normal activity are of little concern. It is when metabolism is going too fast or too slow that weight problems begin.
The human body has a remarkable function that most likely evolved as a survival mechanism during the long ice ages of pre-history. When normal metabolic activity is not going fast enough to deal with the food supply, excess food is converted into special fat cells and stored within the body. These fat cells can be taken later and basically burned for fuel. It is as if the body had developed a whole series of spare gas tanks. When a gas station (meal) is not available, these tanks will provide refills.
The system is a good one and it worked well when we were in caves. Humans were like bears. They stored up fat in the summer when food was plentiful, and it helped them through the long winter when it was not. In the modern world, food is always plentiful. In an ideal world, this whole fat storage system would not be needed in humans. The intake of food could always be adjusted to the metabolism rate and amount of activity being performed.
The system is still with us, sadly, and slow metabolism, too little activity, and too much food will almost always produce unwanted weight gain. This weight is hard to lose because the food intake rarely ceases completely. Extremely high metabolism rates will cause unwanted weight loss as well. The process is just the opposite as the weight gain process. Fast metabolism is burning up fuel faster than the body needs it and this might send the cells looking for some extra fat cells to metabolize.