Trying to drop body fat without knowing your Metabolic Profile is really, really, difficult. You either need to have great genetics or get lucky. Have you ever wondered exactly how many grams of carbs you need to eat to lose weight, or how many calories you need to perform at your peak? Instead of yo-yo dieting, or playing Russian roulette with your health, to achieve a lifestyle (and weight) you can sustain, you need to learn your personal Metabolic Profile.
Understand Your Metabolic Rate
The first step is understanding your metabolic rate. Have you ever noticed that your body rarely responds the same way twice on a particular diet? This is because your metabolic rate is a moving target that is constantly changing and adapting to your environment. Furthermore, two people of similar size can have very different metabolic rates. Your metabolic rate, not your size, is the biggest indicator of what triggers weight loss.
Nutrition Influences Your Metabolic Profile
Your metabolism constantly shifts to match your food intake. This is great news if your goal is to maintain your weight. It’s possibly “not so great” news if you want to weigh less. You see, as you eat less your metabolic rate downshifts to recapture homeostasis, the ability or tendency to maintain internal stability in an organism to compensate for environmental changes. Everything about your body revolves around maintaining homeostasis, for example, homeostasis is when your body maintains an average temperature of 98.6 degrees. So in a paradoxical way, the worst thing you can do for your metabolism is “eat less”, only you have to eat less to lose weight (now you see the paradox).
The key to weight loss is not eating less, but to use the same adaptive response to “rev up” your metabolism after achieving periods of weight loss.
Your Body Type Effects How You Respond to Diet & Exercise
Everyone’s body adapts differently to changes in diet and exercise. Ectomorphs acclimate quickest to increases in food intake, making fat loss easier but muscle development hard. Endomorphs acclimate quickest to restricted food intake, making fat loss harder but muscular development easy. And Mesomorphs land somewhere in between based on their diet and training history. They tend to be a medium build but can gain body fat with age.
The missing ingredient is knowing exactly how your specific body type will respond to dietary and activity adjustments. By gaining a better understanding of your Metabolic Profile, you will be able to take specific steps needed to stay progressive in your goals.
Understanding your Metabolic Profile is critical when selecting the right approach. As we've said, you won’t respond the same way as someone else with different genetics. Everyone needs something different, furthermore, they need something different at different times. A one-size-fits-all diet may work for a period of time, but only until your metabolism figures out what you're up to. That’s one reason why most diets fail.
There are many factors that influence your personal Metabolic Profile. Unlocking your potential begins with identifying where your personal starting point is at.
