How does someone’s metabolism impact the calories consumed vs calories burned equation?
In: Biology
Your metabolism impacts how quickly your body burns calories. Given two otherwise identical bodies performing identical work, a person with a slow metabolism will burn fewer calories than a person with a fast metabolism.
A more active metabolism means the calories consumed don’t go as far to power the body as they are converted to energy and used up and then without more calories, the body starts burning its fat reserves instead = weight loss.
Conversely, a slower metabolism means the calories consumed still haven’t been fully processed by the time more calories are being taken in, so those newer calories are stored as fat = weight gain.
Your body can change the amount of calories it uses in response to all sorts of things.
It may well be that these days what we actually mean by “fast metabolism”, is a normal human without any metabolic disorder who can increase calorie use in response to excess calories in to remain a healthy weight.
metabolism is general a term for how our bodies live
we take the things we put in,
process them,
break them down,
build them into things we can use
then spend them on living and moving around
or store them as fat or muscle
Metabolism changes your calories in and your calories out.
Calories in doesn’t mean what goes in your mouth, it means what your body actually extracts in the digestion process. This varies by individual.
Calories out means the actual chemical energy used, which is different for different people even for an externally similar set of actions.
That’s the first order effect. The second order effects are how metabolism affects hunger, satiety, etc. Almost no one is doing perfect portion control and tracking everything with scientific precision. Metabolism affects people’s ability to stay aligned with a given nutrition goal – to keep calories in “up” or “down” as needed.
All weight gain boils down to the fact that you are consuming more calories than you are using
Now, where the complicated bits are is that there a million different things affect calories in your body
Your metabolism is the system of chemicals and processes happening all the time that convert the food into energy. Your metabolic rate is influenced by many factors – including age, gender, muscle ratio , amount of physical activity and hormone function etc
So basically if you have an active metabolism, your body is going to processing calories much faster. If you eat the same as someone whose metabolism isn’t as active, you’re going to lose weight faster than they are (or at least not gain it as fast)
metabolism is literally how many calories out you have. ok, maybe not literally, but metabolism is the reason why two different people have different calories out while doing the exact same thing.
Because youre forgetting the time component. Think of it like a sink, with a tap and a drain.
You could have 3L of water you pass through the system, and it will be 3L on the other side but the difference in the rate of flow in (tap) and out (drain) will cause the water level in the sink to rise.
If your drain’s too small it rises
A person’s metabolism ultimately determines how many calories go in and how many go out. Just because you ate food with an x amount of calories it doesn’t mean your body will actually absorb all of them, and once they’re absorbed your metabolism determines what your body will do with them. Some people’s metabolism are more efficient than others, or faster, or slower. Some people may consume an x amount of calories and then burn pretty much all of it, while others will form adipose tissue despite needing that extra energy and they’ll go hungry again since their body will always prioritise making fat more than others, and this doesn’t directly correlate with their energy needs or habits.
Let’s take two cars for example. Car A 🚗 and car B 🚙
Car A drives really fast all the time, and usually averages 19 miles per gallon.
Car B drives a bit more steady and averages 23 miles per gallon.
On a road trip, car A will need “more fuel” to get to same distance as car B.
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