You will undoubtedly have heard about metabolism and that it can affect your body. It’s true definition is.
The physical and chemical processes that occur inside the cells of the body to maintain life.
Seeing it in black and white, perhaps that makes its’ importance more obvious. Exercise and diet both play a role in our metabolism, ideally we want to keep it running smoothly, but sometimes changes to our eating or exercise regime can increase or decrease it. Too little and it slows down (to reserve energy), too much and we can overload the system. In a perfect balance we do enough to keep it ticking over.
You may have heard of the Basal Metabolic Rate, which is defined as the rate at which your body uses energy when you are resting in order to keep vital functions operating – such as breathing. Calculating your BMR using a calculator is probably easiest, as it requires varying scores for activity level. Be honest though – don’t over or under estimate too much.