“I just can’t lose weight,” a friend moaned. “It’s not my fault. I have a slow metabolism.”

How many times have you heard (or said) that?  It’s true that a slow metabolism makes weight loss difficult.  Your metabolism is the rate your body burns calories.  If person A has a fast metabolism and his long-suffering friend B has a slow one, they can eat the same amount, but B stores more as fat while A quickly burns his calories off.  (A has to be a really nice person for this relationship to last.  B married to A speaking here.)

But not to worry!  You are not stuck with your crummy metabolism. There are things you can do to give it a boost.  We’ll be looking at these things in our upcoming blogs.

By the way, some of the “metabolism boosting”  foods we hear touted often don’t stand up to scrutiny.  We’ll look at some of those, too.

And here is something interesting to get us started:  Your metabolism is naturally revved up by carrying around a lot of weight.  It takes some energy to digest all that food and to keep a heavy body moving.  That’s why weight drops off quickly when an overweight person starts a healthy eating plan.  After a few weeks on a diet, this effect levels off as his body goes into starvation mode and tries to stop the fat from leaving.  That’s why you were doing so well and suddenly the weight loss screeches to a halt and you hit a plateau.  You have to change some things to rev up your metabolism, get off the plateau, and get back on your journey to a healthy, vibrant body.  We’ll be looking at things you can control and change in the next few blogs — so be sure to come back and join us!

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown