2936: [Part 1] Calories Out: How Does Your Metabolism Burn Calories? by Rachel Trotta

[00:00:00] Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep.

[00:00:24] So, press play on Good Sleep Tonight because a good tomorrow starts with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Health Daily. Calories out! How Does Your Metabolism Burn Calories? Part 1 by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com and I'm Dr. Neal, your host and narrator.

[00:00:50] Hey there, happy Monday and welcome back to another week of Optimal Health Daily. This is where I read to you from some of the best health and fitness blogs on the web, kind of like an ongoing audiobook, and with a little bit of my own commentary at the end. Now we have five shows where we narrate blogs for you, covering a bunch of different topics. Check them all out by searching for Optimal Living Daily wherever you're hearing this. I'm going to keep this intro nice and short because I'm excited to read to you from Rachel Trotta's blog.

[00:01:19] So let's get right to today's post as we optimize your life. Calories out! How Does Your Metabolism Burn Calories? Part 1 by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com Knowledge is the antidote to fear. My priority in my work with clients is that they not only achieve their goals, but also that they become intelligent information consumers and critical thinkers.

[00:01:48] With all of my clients, I strive to educate them so that they can be unfazed by new studies that pop up on the morning news or on social media, and can understand how to analyze new information and translate it into meaningful action. This is because many, many nutrition and fitness headlines, whether on social media or on the morning news, play on fear. Fear and worry thrive in an environment of innocent ignorance.

[00:02:16] Education, on the other hand, is empowering and makes individuals mentally strong and resilient. In other words, the magical antidote to fear is knowledge. This is especially true when it comes to weight and health-related information. Weight loss-related marketing and advertising is abundant. And when we are not knowledgeable about how and why metabolic processes function the way they do, we are more susceptible to fear-inciting advertising, journalism, and media.

[00:02:45] We are more vulnerable to click-baity links leading to garbage information or products. Sometimes, we're even prone to make neurotic decisions about our health, like dieting too hard or taking questionable supplements to help us lose weight faster. On the other end of the spectrum, misinformation about metabolism can simply lead to complete inaction. Feeling that something is wrong with you or that your metabolic rate is somehow too slow or even damaged for whatever reason

[00:03:15] can result in a total lack of troubleshooting solutions and experimenting with lifestyle changes. It's just too hard. At either end of the spectrum is fear and frustration and possibly poor health. Knowledge, education, and critical thinking, on the other hand, short-circuit frustration and failure and pave a path to effective action, authentic confidence, and lasting results. I love talking about metabolism with my clients because it empowers them to make sound decisions for their bodies

[00:03:44] and ignore hyped-up, fear-based media. So, I'm going to be exploring the topic of metabolism, inside and out. So, let's start with calories out. Burning calories. The first thing you must understand about calories is how and why they burn. When you burn calories, you are experiencing a chemical reaction in your body. It is, put simply, your body using the energy stored in calories,

[00:04:11] either from stored fat cells or incoming food calories, for fuel. The heat, which is coined the term burn, is the chemical reaction that takes place when your body converts calories into actual energy expenditure. When you are taking in less food than your energy needs on a regular basis, your body begins to mobilize the calories stored in body fat to make up the difference in fuel, which results in fat loss.

[00:04:36] And no, you can't target fat loss on your abs by doing crunches or on your butt by doing squats. Fat loss happens from all over the body in ways that tend to be predetermined by your genetics. Another way to look at metabolism is to simply call it energy needs. It's like a budget. Let's say your house costs $1,000 per month to rent or own. Your house requires $1,000 of energy from you. If you can't get that $1,000 from your monthly income,

[00:05:06] let's say you only make $800 per month, you must dip into your savings to pay your mortgage. That's how fat loss works. If your daily food intake is not enough to cover your energy needs, your body will dip into savings or calories stored as body fat to make up the difference. So, what is all this energy needed for? Energy needs for survival. An absolutely huge part of your metabolism is solely dedicated to keeping you alive.

[00:05:36] Even if you relaxed in bed all day, your body would still work quite hard to keep your lungs pumping, your heart beating, your liver detoxifying, and more. In other words, if you did not exercise at all, your metabolism would devote considerable energy to simply running the machine. Even for small women, let's say, this calorie burn is typically upwards of 1,000 per day, much more than you would likely estimate. Your body takes energy just to maintain itself.

[00:06:06] This is called resting metabolic rate. This number is highly individual and can be calculated simply using height, weight, age, and sex. You can roughly figure out your resting metabolic rate, though, by multiplying your body weight by 10. Say you weigh 150 pounds, multiply that by 10, that equals 1,500 calories per day that you burn at rest. But to get the most nuanced number, there are more specific formulas that you can find.

[00:06:35] Some individual factors, like hormones, can affect resting metabolic rate. More on that later, though. However, there are two more extremely important ways that your body burns calories that you can either indirectly influence or directly control to increase the daily calorie burn of your metabolism. To be continued. You just listened to part one of the post titled Calories Out.

[00:07:04] How Does Your Metabolism Burn Calories? by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Oikos presents 15 seconds of strength. Here we go. Steve's got a trunk full of groceries and no one to help him. Oh, that's tough, Jim. Looks like a five-trip load at least. He grabs the first bag. The second. Bob, it looks like he's trying to do it all one trip. He shimmies the door open, steps over the dog. Oh, and he stumbles. Oh, right into the kitchen without missing a beat. Jim, now that's a man who eats his protein-packed oikos.

[00:07:34] With 15 grams of complete protein in each cup, Oikos Triple Zero can help build strength for every day. Oikos. Stronger makes everything better. Dr. Neil here for my commentary. I loved Rachel's budget analogy to explain calories in and calories out. Genius. I'm totally gonna borrow that one explaining metabolism. And as Rachel mentioned, when we think about metabolism, we often think of it as something we have zero control over. But as Rachel so eloquently put it, this is simply not the case.

[00:08:03] We do have control over it. This is because metabolism is simply referring to calories burned in a day. Don't you have control over how many calories you burn in a day? Absolutely. How we move and how often we move burns calories. In fact, some very interesting studies have been performed comparing those that are constantly fidgeting. You know, those folks that can't seem to sit still and are always tapping their feet or their pencils. And they compared these fidgeters to those that don't fidget as much.

[00:08:32] And they found that when it comes to calories burned, those that fidget more often burn up to 2,000 more calories a day. So even small movements performed consistently can lead to a higher metabolism or more calories burned. In fact, Rachel's gonna discuss this further on tomorrow's show. So I won't steal her thunder and go into any more details here. And that'll do it for the Monday episode. I hope you have a great start to your week.

[00:09:01] And I'll be back here tomorrow to finish up this post and where your optimal life awaits.