Why Do I Keep Gaining Weight?

By Royce K. Bailey, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.C., M.A.A.C.

You watch what you eat and exercise and are still gaining weight-why? Your metabolism rate is the largest factor in determining your weight loss success. What slows my metabolism down? As you age, your muscle mass decreases and therefore, so does your metabolic rate.

Your Metabolism Slows By 5 % Every Decade

Your metabolic rate is made up of three parts: 70% is your Basal (resting) Metabolic Rate (BMR), 10% is the thermal effects of the food you eat and 20-25% is made up by your physical activity. “If you never had problems losing or maintaining your weight in your 20s or even in your early 30s, you may not be ready for what happens next,” warns Madelyn H. Fernstrom, Ph.D., director of the Weight Management Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “Your metabolism slows by 5 percent each decade. Compared to age 25, you’ll burn about 100 fewer calories a day at 35 and 200 fewer at 45. Do nothing, and you could gain eight to 12 pounds a year.” One pound of fat burns 2 calories per day at rest, while a pound of muscle burns 6 to 12 calories during the same period. When you add exercise your muscles burn a lot more calories, while your fat continues to burn two calories per pound.

Muscle Burns Three Times More Calories Than Fat

“A woman who weighs 130 pounds and has a healthy 25 percent body fat will burn about 200 more calories per day than a 130-pound woman with about 40 percent body fat — a typical level for women at mid life,” says David C. Nieman, Dr.P.H., director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. You can go to a local gym or your fitness center to be measured for your body percentage of fat. Anything over 30% fat needs attention.

How Many Calories Can I Eat Without Gaining Weight?

It takes energy to maintain your bodily functions, like digestion, blood circulation, and breathing. The energy, or calories, you burn just to keep you alive is called your BMR. It mirrors how many calories you would burn if you did nothing all day but lie in bed. So here’s the formula to calculate your BMR:

Women: 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)

Men: 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

OK, so how many calories do I burn if I am:

• Sedentary (little or no exercise): BMR x 1.2
• Lightly active (easy exercise/sports 1-3 days/week): BMR x 1.375
• Moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week): BMR x 1.55
• Very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week): BMR x 1.725
• Extremely active (very hard exercise/sports and physical job): BMR x 1.9

This is the total number of calories per day you would need to eat to maintain your current weight. If this sounds too easy, it is. It depends on your percentage of lean body muscle and body fat that you start with! One pound of body fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories — which means a person must cut that many calories from their diet to lose a single pound of fat. Eliminating 500 calories a day by reducing your calorie intake by 300 calories a day and increase your activity to burn 200 extra calories per day and you can expect a steady weight loss of approximately one pound per week. Here are the most common mistakes affecting your metabolic rate.

MISTAKE #1: Crash Dieting

A fast can drop your metabolic rate by as much as 25 percent. If you’re on a very-low-cal diet (400- to 800-calories a day) your metabolic rate falls by 15 to 20 percent. Eating fewer than 900 calories a day burns desirable muscle tissue as well as fat, which slows your metabolic rate even more. If your diet stays within the 1,200 to 1,500 calorie range, about 90 percent of the weight you lose will be fat and you’ll lower your metabolic rate only by about 5 percent.

Amino Acid Leucine

Eat about 20% of your diet as protein. Protein contains leucine, one of the eight essential amino acid, that protects you from muscle loss during dieting. Food rich in leucine include: soybeans, seeds, peanuts, almonds, walnuts, chickpeas, garbanzos, flax seed, hummus and asparagus.

MISTAKE #2: Never Challenging Your Muscles

If you never exercise you will lose up to five pounds of muscle each decade. You need to exercise with walking, biking, swimming, or sweating at an exercise class. Strength training causes micro-tears in your muscles and rebuilding them burns a lot of calories and fat. Strength training, 20 minutes twice a week, after ten weeks showed women added 2.6 pounds of muscle and lost 4.6 pounds of body fat.

MISTAKES #3: Never Changing Your Routine

Researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario found that women who did interval workouts on stationary bikes for two weeks burned 36 percent more fat than when they completed a steady ride. Martin Gibala, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist at McMaster University says, “When you push hard in short bursts, it reactivates nerve fibers, builds new capillaries, and forces your body to repair the muscle. All of that burns a tremendous amount of calories,” for up to eight hours afterwards.

MISTAKE #4: Being Sleep Deprived

When Harvard Medical School scientists followed 68,183 women for 16 years, they found that those averaging five hours of sleep a night were 32 percent more likely to gain 33 pounds than those who got seven hours a night. Those sleeping an average of six hours per night were 12 percent more likely to gain weight. Sleep deprivation increases the appetite-stimulating hormone, ghrelin, and decreases the satisfaction hormone, leptin, say researchers from the University of Chicago. In a study they conducted, tired volunteers craved more candy, cookies, chips, and pasta.

MISTAKE #5: Being Stressed Out

When you get hurried and stressed (Job! Kids! House! Marriage!), your levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), go up. That triggers cravings for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods and sends that extra fat to your (Oh, NO!) waistline. All that extra cortisol makes you want to eat–anything and everything. Avoid starchy food in the last half of the day. Choose low glycemic index carbs for your carbohydrate portions. If you will take a walk, look at greenery, drink water, call a friend, read, or pray, the ‘urge to splurge’ will pass in 10 to 20 minutes.

Drink your allotment of water. ½ your weight in pounds=ounces per day of water intake you should drink. Not only will this decrease your appetite, but it will lessen your stress level. Add 16 ounces of water for very cup of tea, coffee, or soda you drink. So I recommend you avoid these beverages and stick to water to stay hydrated and decrease your perceived stress level.

MISTAKE #6: Forgetting To Eat Breakfast

You overate at supper so you have no appetite in the morning. So you’re trying to cut calories early in the day but women whose diet resolve is strongest in the morning reset their metabolism lower to burn 5% less calories by skipping breakfast. Missed meals decrease the receptors in your brain and stomach that register satisfaction and fullness. Researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso discovered a metabolic appetite control: a hearty breakfast. Study volunteers who ate a bigger meal in the morning went on to eat 100 to 200 fewer calories later in the day. Research from Michigan State University that tracked 4,218 people, showed that women who skipped breakfast were 30 percent more likely to be overweight. So eat healthy and have a good breakfast.

Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1Thesssalonians 5:16-18

References:

Harrar, S., Supercharge Your Metabolism,” April 2008:173-174; 250. http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/advice/boost‑metabolism‑lose‑weight

Provost, J., “How Many Calories Do You Need?” April 2008 www.goodhousekeeping.com/bmr

http://www.weightlossforall.com/calories‑per‑pound.htm

http://www.personaltrainingfitness.com/calories‑per‑pound‑of‑fat.html