Tuesday, September 18 2012

It’s seems like every fitness-expert wannabe has a website proclaiming he knows the secret way to turn your body into a fat-incinerating blast furnace.

Yeah, right.

Some myths about boosting metabolism are so prevalent that they’ve been repeated again and again via best-selling fitness books and popular magazines. You’ll hear personal trainers and nutrition counsellors spew this information, as well.

Don’t believe it.

Here is a harsh, cold smack in the face for you: There are no secret tricks to boost metabolism.

Granted, we are talking about resting metabolism — the calories you burn when you’re not active.

Getting active definitely revs things up temporarily, but thinking that all these other tricks you can employ are going to cause your body to burn a bunch of extra calories while you sleep or eat Cheetos or watch porn is a myth.

In reality, the act of getting in shape and, specifically, losing weight will cause your resting metabolism to go down. If you go from overweight, doughnut-scarfing couch potato to lean-and- mean workout warrior, the number of calories you burn at rest is going to drop significantly. Yes, even if you packed on a bunch of muscle.

This is because a lower body weight equals a lower resting metabolism. Also, when you consistently push your body hard with physical exercise, it gets used to it; it gets more efficient.

Not just at doing the exercise, but at any kind of activity. Even while watching Survivor or playing Halo, you’ll burn fewer calories.

Without further ado into additional time-wasting activities, here’s part one of the most three most popular metabolism myths. We’ll use actual real-science-type stuff to bust the hell out of them.

Myth: Adding muscle mass dramatically increases daily caloric burn You may have heard that one pound of muscle will burn 50 calories a day just sitting doing nothing. If you gain ten pounds of muscle, you would therefore gain an additional 500 calories per day metabolic boost just sitting around. Many people, including made-famous-by-Oprah and Dr Oz have spread this information. But is it true?

I wish.

In fact, according to internationally renowned obesity researcher Dr. Claude Bouchard, muscle has a relatively low resting metabolic rate.

Dr. Bouchard said that, on average, a pound of muscle will only burn an extra six calories per day, and that this is marginally better than what a pound of fat burns in a day, which is two calories.