If only we knew what parts of our day required the most energy / fuel / calories, maybe we could double down on the right areas to boost our metabolism!

Guess what? We do! Take a look ...

While calories (energy in vs. energy out) matter for body composition and health, it does not mean that calories need to be counted. By understanding how our body and metabolism work, you will be able to make more informed choices.

The calories that you take in from food and drinks are used to fuel these different parts of our metabolism as depicted in the chart above.

BMR takes the biggest slice and stands for Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the amount of energy you burn at rest, just keeping yourself alive.

NEAT means Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis and includes all movement you do that isn't your actual workouts. Things like standing, walking, cleaning, gardening, chasing after your kids, grandkids, or fur babies, etc.

EAT is Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or the amount of calories you burn during workouts.

TEF stands for the Thermic Effect of Food and includes the amount of calories your body requires to eat, digest and assimilate your nutrients. Yup, eating burns calories.

What can you DO with this information? Double down on the most important parts!

You'll notice BMR and NEAT have the biggest influence over your metabolism. Here are some ways to focus your energy there:

Strength train at least 3 days a week. While you will be requiring calories during your actual workout (EAT), adding muscle will increase your BMR because just having more muscle is calorically-demanding -- even at rest!
Aim for at least 20-30g of protein with each meal. This does increase TEF, but also gives you the building blocks needed to put on muscle from your workouts, thereby hiking up your BMR.
Take on some (more?) active hobbies. Go for walking meetings or phone calls when possible, stand up instead of sitting down, fidget, change positions often, basically, be more like a toddler. :-)
Get cold! Shoot for a couple of minutes of being uncomfortably (but safely) cold, a couple times a week. Ideally you're shivering for much of this. The way our muscles contract all at once while we shiver adds quite a bit to our NEAT, and also ... stimulates a process by which our white adipose tissue (regular fat) becomes the more metabolically active brown adipose tissue. This brown adipose tissue (also known as BAT) burns significantly more calories at rest than "regular fat", increasing your BMR.

Bottom line, if fat loss is a goal, you will need to be taking in less energy via food and drinks than you are using up in order to achieve that goal. If you would like to be able to eat more calories and still be in this deficit, working on increasing your metabolism is the way to go!

***If you'd like to get the ball rolling on your health + body goals, join us inside the 7-Day Kickstart. We start Monday, January 24th, but enrollment ends THIS THURSDAY, the 20th. It's not a quick fix, just us spending the first week of the rest of your life together. MORE INFO HERE.***

XO,
Tara