Slow Metabolism ..

Did you notice, that some people retain skinny eating anything they want, and others have to think twice before they eat one more cookie? Thin people have higher metabolic rate and burn calories at a much faster rate then theirs overweight friends. When your metabolism slows down, the body will store rather than burn calories and cause an accumulation of fat. A critical aspect of metabolism is known as basal metabolic rate (BMR), which various between individuals, is the minimum amount of energy needed to maintain normal body functions. BMR tends to decrease with age. If a person had proper well-balanced diet from his or her childhood, especially before the age of ten, it's likely that his/her metabolic rate would be healthy for many years. Otherwise, you are always running a high risk of be overweight. If you have an inefficient thyroid gland (hypothyroism) - your metabolism is slow. The symptoms of subclinical and clinical hypothyroism are: chronic constipation, fatigue, being cold, and a tendency to gain weight. Today malnutrition is characterized by the inability of our systems to use many of the foods we eat. An improper nutrition results in a derangement of the hormone balance. This derangement upsets the metabolic rate, which is why people often find it impossible to lose weight, even on very low calorie diet. When our metabolism slows, the body will store rather then burn calories, causing an accumulation of fat. If you don't start acting on the first stage of obesity, with time it becomes even more difficult to restore a normal balance, 'cause your metabolic rate and hormone system have been already changed. Would you like to get more reality of what happens to you if you're obese? Take a look.


1. Insulin Resistance
The obesity always accompanied by Insulin Resistance, resulting in hyperinsulinemia, in direct proportion to the amount of excess body fat. Insulin allows the body to utilize glucose (sugar) and carbohydrates. If insulin is not rapidly cleared from the bloodstream after a meal, it will cause the feeling of being hungry. Usually insulin will signal the body to stop eating, but if a person has chronically elevated glucose levels due to inefficient insulin, he may eat more. Thus, the more refined carbohydrates a person eat, the hungrier he or she may become. If you already have Insulin resistance, be careful with dieting - it might raise your problems. To make matter worse, since the insulin is not converting the glucose to energy, more glucose is then moved into the fat cells to create more fat. When an overweight person becomes more obese, the insulin problem becomes worse as well, because the individual becomes more unresponsive to the action of insulin.

2. Leptin Resistance
Being overweight produces leptin resistance. Leptin is a hormone associated with the obesity gene. Leptin acts on the brain's hypothalamus to regulate the extent of body fat, the ability to burn fat for energy. Also leptin signals the brain satiety center that sufficient amount of food has been taken. When you're overweight, your leptin levels increase, but its action is stiftled. In obesity, leptin levels increase in concert with insulin levels.

3. Cortisol resistence
Being overweight promotes cortisol reistence. As a general rule, when you are overweight, you will have chronically higher levels of cortisol (stress hormone) production. High leves of cortisol in itself promote weight gain. The primary action of cortisol is increasing blood suger levels at the expense of muscle tissue. While this is the desired effect in a fight-or-flight situation, on a chronic nasis it will lead to insulin resistense and an alteration in body composition from muscle to fat. Furthermore, researchers believe that hight cortesol tends to increase appetite, due to an association with leptin.

4. Decrease of growth hormone (GH)
Being overweight decreases growth hormone. The resistance to insulin elevate the insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which inhibits the production of growth hormone. Since growth hormone promotes lean body mass, enhances the peripheral conversion of thyroid hormone to metabolically active thyroid hormone, and enhances processes aimed at fat burning, the reduction in this hormone has a negative effect on the body composition.

5. Diabetes
Over time, as pancreatic beta cells continue to produce larger and larger amounts of insulin and remain unable to normalize blood sugar, they will eventually become exhausted. The progression to full-fledged Diabetes can occur over time.


In other words, slow metabolism causes obesity, obesity causes slow metabolism. Running in Circle. Being obese means being ill. Obesity links to a number of health problems, including high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, gall-bladder disease, respiratory conditions, as well as breast, endometrial, and uterine cancer in woman, and cancer of the colon and rectum in men. Sounds horrible, right? The good news is that you can always take a control over your body. Lose weight means stay in control of yourself. If you have knowledge and tools, it will be not so complicated after all.