Your Resting Metabolic Rate- Keeping the Engine Revving!

“Well, I want to lose weight. I’ve lost weight in the past a few times, once when I bought those expensive meal plans and once when I started running. But after a few weeks, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I had no energy, and I was hungry all the time. I gained all the weight back, and then some. I would really like to you have better willpower this time.”

Does that sound familiar to you? It certainly does to us. We have done consultations with thousands of clients throughout our careers, so we have heard this one a lot. We also discussed this a few weeks ago, so go back and check it out if you missed it. Today we will be talking about resting metabolic rate.

Your resting metabolic rate is defined as the number of calories a human burns in a rested state. Turns out, even if we are not currently exercising, humans need quite a bit of energy just to stay at rest. Hopefully if you are reading this, you have a heart that pumps, kidneys that are filtering, a brain that is thinking, and all kinds of things going on inside. You also have a certain amount of muscle mass that allows you to be mobile. All of these things contribute to your resting metabolic rate. Your resting metabolic rate makes up the majority of the calories you burn every single day. You have probably heard that in order to lose weight, you must be in a “negative caloric balance”. That simply means that you must burn more calories than you consume in your diet. It makes sense. If someone is burning 2000 calories a day, and they eat 2000 calories a day, then we would expect them to maintain their weight. That sounds simple enough. Now let’s say they want to lose a few pounds. No problem! All we need now is simple math. There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat. Divide that number by seven for each of the days of the week, and we have 500 calories per day. Logically, all you would need to do is reduce your calorie intake by 500, increase your energy expenditure by 500, or some combination of the two. By the end of the week, you will have lost one pound. There is a popular television show that uses these concepts as well. Contestants work out for several hours a day and eat and extremely limited number of calories. It is amazing and inspiring to see these people put forth so much effort. And it works! So many of them lose a tremendous amount of weight. How wonderful that these peopl