Bear with me, because I’m going to show you how metabolism is linked to your weight. The fact is that your metabolism influences your body's energy needs, however it is your calorie intake and exercise that actually determine how much you weigh.

What does this mean to you?

Fact is, according to some medical reports, a slow metabolism is rarely the cause of obesity.

Some specifics: Metabolism is a complex biochemical process which converts what you consume into energy. During the metabolic process, calories in your food and drink are combined with oxygen to release the energy your body needs to properly function. Even when you are sleeping or just resting, your body needs energy for breathing, blood circulation, hormone production, and cell growth and repair.

You see, your metabolism is the number of calories your body uses to carry out these basic functions.  This is called your basal metabolic rate. Your basal metabolic rate accounts for about 60 to 75 percent of the calories you burn every day.

But here’s the most important part - we are all different and these are the factors that affect your metabolism:

1. Your age. As we age, we lose muscle mass and fat makes up most our weight.  This slows down the body’s rate of burning calories.  
2. Your body size and muscle/fat ratio. Generally, larger bodies have more muscle and burn more calories than smaller bodies.   
3. Your sex. Men burn more calories than women because of more muscle mass.

For these reasons, two of three areas of energy consumption (calorie burning) are from your basal metabolic rate (breathing, etc.) and food processing. Each and every day your body uses a steady amount of energy for both of these two areas.  The third area of energy consumption is physical activity.  

Quite simply, metabolism is based on your personal demand for energy to operate your body, and it is fairly steady and balanced on a daily basis. 

So it adds up to this; aggressive dieting disrupts the basic metabolism and your ability to manage your weight. 

So let me summarize and review… obesity or being overweight is most likely from eating more calories than you can burn. So for weight loss we must create a situation where we are eating fewer calories and/or burning more from exercise.

This is the primary reason the best weight loss program minimizes the impact to your basal metabolism and includes moderate exercise to burn calories.  A quick healthy weight loss program is healthy enough to maintain basic metabolism and quick enough to see steady results for encouragement.  

Vitally important last and final point: there is a program that actually saves you money and finds you time in your day for fitness exercise.  Yes, you read that right…

If you are overweight and looking for a healthy weight loss plan consider one of the oldest food management plans in existence.  The heart of dieting is to find a food management plan that is not impossible to handle, is not depressing, and does not take away your favorite foods.