Lower Your Metabolism!

OK, now that we’ve established what your metabolism is, and the manners in which it can be raised, let’s make sure we can put that information to use and get its’ full benefits. The way to do that is to avoid some all too common mistakes that may negate your progress, or worse, actually lower your metabolism.

The following are the best two ways to lower your metabolism. Please avoid them!

• Don’t move.

This is by far the best way to lower your resting metabolic rate. When you don’t expend any energy, your body doesn’t want to use any, so it lowers your metabolism to meet your lack of activity.

This is why I tell people all the time this is the best way to lose pounds. Just sit on the couch and do NOTHING. You won’t burn any calories, so your body will lower your metabolic rate so you won’t feel the need to eat any calories and you’ll waste away and be one of those skinny fat people. Enjoy.

That actually leads to #2…

• Don’t eat frequently enough

When your body goes for a sustained period of time with no food (usually around 4-6 hours) it goes into starvation mode. This is a self - defense mechanism by the body to avoid starvation designed to keep you alive. Your metabolism doesn’t know you may eat something later – it assumes you won’t, and it stops using energy, and stops burning…calories…COMPLETELY. One of the best ways to bring your metabolism to a screeching halt is to starve yourself.  Then, you'll also have the mood and the personality to go along with your great “skinny fat” look.

And although it may not lower your metabolism, the best way to keep it nice and low is to…

• Waste your time with exercise that is not intense

Exercise that is moderate or low in intensity can be a deleterious, crippling factor to your metabolism. Although it technically may not lower your metabolic rate, it certainly takes a lot of time and takes you away from more beneficial activities that you can be doing to raise your metabolism.

Before we move on, let’s get a few things out of the way quickly:  Typially this is the point in the discussion where peoples’ opinions begin to differ with mine and like to point out a few very common rebuttals to my statements. The rebuttals always come at this point in the discussion because nobody had a problem with what I wrote in part 1, where we defined metabolism, or in part 2 where I told you how your metabolism can be raised. They have a problem at this point because of one reason:

They don’t like what I have to say – period.

They either a)want their own opinion validated, and are pissed when I don’t do that, or b) realize what I’m saying they need to do is hard work – real hard work and they just aren’t willing to do it, and would rather choose the easy way out.

For discussions’ sake I’m going to need you to pick out a low intensity exercise to fill in the blank below. It can be anything – jogging, yoga, hiking, whatever. Generally, if it takes more than 20 minutes to do, you can use it for our discussion. I’m going to use jogging as my example. I hate to always pick on jogging, but it’s just the most common choice for most people, so I’ll go with it. And again, if you do any of those things, don’t take it personally, it doesn’t make you a bad person if you do it for fun or competition. But if you’re doing those things to become lean…

Common rebuttal #1: “Well, when I jog, it IS intense, hard, makes me sweat, etc. so it must be raising my metabolism.”

Answer: No, it’s not intense. There is an inverse relationship between intensity and duration of exercise. This is a matter of physics not open to debate. This is why the fastest people in the world can only be at their fastest for a matter of seconds. The longer they run, the more they have to slow down. The intensity must decrease in order for them to continue running. Therefore, any extended run, by definition, is NOT intense.

Common rebuttal #2: “Well at least I’m doing something – that’s better than doing nothing.”

Answer: If you want to reduce it to the lowest common denominator, sure, doing something is better than nothing. But if I said to you all I had to eat today was a Big Mac, you would say that was stupid. But then if I said, “Well it’s better than eating nothing!” It’s still stupid.

Common rebuttal #3: “Jogging is fun/I enjoy it.”

Answer: That’s fine if you do something for enjoyment, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re discussing the best way to burn calories and your way is not the best way.

Common rebuttal #4: “So many people jog, it must do something.”

Answer: A lot of people smoke pot too, that won’t raise their metabolism either.

Common rebuttal #6: “Well, your workouts are 1 hour, how can they be intense?”

Answer: Technically we do 5 separate workouts in one hour at The Training Rim. We do a mobility workout, a core workout, two separate strength workouts and a conditioning workout, all with breaks in between. This is how we keep the intensity up, and is why our members resting metabolic rates rise.

To recap all 3 parts of the Metabolism articles:

Many people just don’t want to accept the fact that getting results from exercise is HARD. Raising your resting metabolic rate is HARD. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. And as I’ve said plenty of times previously, I’m like Morpheus in The Matrix: I’m not here to BS you – I’m here to tell you the truth. And if you want to live in denial or if you really don’t want results from exercise that’s fine, it doesn’t make you a bad person – we’ll still be friends. Take the blue pill and believe what you want to believe.

But if you want results from exercise, I’m going to need you to take the red pill. Welcome to the real world with the knowledge the truth will set you free.

Your Metabolism Part 2: How To Raise It

Now that we know what the metabolism is, you can see its importance on how you look and feel. You can also see why it’s so important you raise yours. But, in case you don’t:

Let’s say for discussion’s sake, I order an entire pizza. Yep, a whole pie – just for me. You watch me eat the first seven slices. Then as I grab the 8th, I pause and ask you:

“How many calories do you think are in this slice of pizza?”

Your response, I hope, would be something along the lines of: “Uh, it really doesn’t matter, Jon. You just ate SEVEN. The eighth one doesn’t really make too much of a difference.”

This is exactly how I feel when people ask me “How many calories does this workout burn?”

It’s never even occurred to me to ask how many calories a particular workout burns – the thought never enters my mind until someone asks. The reason, I hope is obvious at this point: because just the way that one slice of pizza was a very small portion of the whole, that one hour of exercise is a very small part of the whole day. In fact there are 23 other hours in the day, so anyone who implies there is real importance to the number of calories burned during a workout doesn’t really get the “big picture” concept. And as usual, if it comes from an exerciser who doesn’t know better – no big deal, that’s why we’re here. But if a fitness professional has discussions with you about how many calories their workouts burn, you need to get another fitness professional.

Instead, your focus MUST be on THE IMPACT YOUR WORKOUT HAS ON YOUR METABOLISM. If your workout can raise your resting metabolic rate, then you will be burning more calories over 24 hours every single day. I think you’ll agree that’s probably a better focus than to just worry about doing a workout that burns “X” calories, but doesn’t do anything to raise your metabolic rate (RMR).

So then the obvious question is “What can raise your metabolic rate?”

For the sake of simplicity and this article, you’ll need to focus on three things that you can do to raise your resting metabolic rate:

1. Exercise intensely. Yes, I understand intense is a relative term, but you need to find what’s intense for you and you need to get there. A good rule of thumb is if it you think it’s enjoyable, it’s probably not intense. Frankly, in most cases it should be God awful. But this kind of misery reaps rewards: this rise in intensity forces your resting metabolism to rise along with it. Your body is going to start processing and utilizing energy very quickly and very efficiently to meet the demands you’re placing on it in the gym.

2. Exercise consistently. Once in awhile won’t cut it. That’s just beating the hell out of yourself for no good reason. Only when you exercise consistently will your metabolism adapt, rise, and stay risen.


3. Eat often. Notice I didn’t say “Eat A LOT”. I said eat OFTEN. When you ingest calories your body uses them quickly. By eating frequently you’re sending a message to your metabolism that it’s going to continue getting calories and it will respond by continually burning calories. It’s only when you don’t eat often enough that your body stops burning calories (more on this later).

So today’s take home messages kids: Worry about how many calories your metabolism burns over 24 hours, not how many your workout does in one. Workout out consistently and intensely and eat often.

Following these tenets may never get you to being an uber calorie burning machine like a high level athlete, but it will increase your own RMR.  Even a slight increase of 25 or 50 calories per day adds up to A LOT of calories not getting stored on your waist over the course of the year.

Stay tuned for part 3 where we’ll discuss habits to avoid that will lower your metabolism. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what may be on the list?

Don't worry, there won't be any more pizza references.

EVERYTHING Is About Your Metabolism

Part 1:

This is the first part of a series of articles designed to explain to you perhaps the most important aspect of the exercise world: your metabolism. Your metabolism, to a large degree, is the largest contributing factor to your success in how you look and feel. Your health, appearance, strength and aesthetics are largely dictated by your metabolism.


Pretty simple so far, right? Well here’s the problem as I’ve come to understand it: In spite of its importance and its simplicity, most people don’t even know what their metabolism is or what it does. And when I say “most people”, I mean most people who exercise. The exact people who should be concerned about their metabolism, what it does and how it can be affected brush it aside as a physiological concept that doesn’t need to be understood. Or worse: there are many who have no clue what it is or does, but pretend they do which predictably leads to them getting zero results.

Knowing what your metabolism is and how it can be affected will make decision making much easier when it comes to how you should exercise and how you should eat.

Let’s start by defining what your metabolism is. For the sake of this article, your metabolism will be referred to as your “resting metabolic rate” or “RMR”. Your resting metabolic rate is the number of calories you would expend over 24 hours AT REST. So if you did nothing but stare at the wall for 24 hours, your body would use “X” number of calories to perform basic life functions – this is your RMR. For the sake of this discussion we’re going to assume your RMR is 2,000 calories.

Important note: Calories burned from activity DO NOT COUNT toward your RMR.

So again, for argument sake, let’s say your RMR is 2,000 calories per day – you will burn 2,000 calories if you do absolutely nothing. You then exercise, go to work, walk your dog, etc. throughout the day that burns an additional 1,200 calories for a total of 3,200 for the day: That 1,200 DOES NOT count toward your RMR. Your metabolism is only what YOU burn without activity.

OK, so now that we know what your metabolism (RMR) is, let’s get to the good part: Let’s discuss what can raise your metabolism and what can lower it, so you know what you should be doing and what you should be not doing.

And before we continue, let’s get one thing perfectly clear:

Yes, it is true that age and genetics are factors in how high or low your metabolism is. An elite level uber-athlete may have a RMR of 4,000. An older couch potato may have a RMR of 800. But here’s the good news:

No matter what your resting metabolic rate is, IT CAN BE IMPROVED. It is possible to be burning more calories just sitting and reading this article. Which is why we have this T-shirt at The TR: