SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN – In the gym, on medical and wellness websites and on social media, the phrase “boost your metabolism” gets thrown around a lot.
Supplement marketers promise pills to make it happen, health mavens pinky swear their diet routine will rev the rate, and probably most of us, starting around our 30s, think that aging has reduced the efficiency of our metabolic engine.
And almost none of that is true.
There isn’t a method to boost metabolism “in a way that’s durable or real,” says Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at the Global Health Institute at Duke University. He says most things people promise will boost metabolism fall into two categories.
“There are things that are dangerous and illegal and things that are BS, and you should probably avoid both of them,” Pontzer says.
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Basal, or resting, metabolic rate refers to work performed by cells when we are doing nothing. It’s the baseline hum of being alive as cells keep blood circulating and lungs functioning. Formally, it’s the calories per minute used for these housekeeping duties.
That adds up to about 50 to 70 percent of the total you burn through each day, depending on age, says Samuel Urlacher, an anthropologist and human evolutionary biologist at Baylor University in Waco, Tex.
Most popular interest in basal metabolism centers around ways to kick it up a notch and increase our energy use while doing absolutely nothing, with the prospect of losing weight in the process.
A common perception is that having a higher metabolism means you can get away with eating more while doing less, without gaining weight. The relationship between basal metabolism and weight is complicated, however, Pontzer says.
“The larger you are, the more cells you’re made of and the more energy you burn because your metabolism is all your cells at work, all day … ”
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