The Claim: Your metabolic rate is determined by your fat free mass

Answer: FACT

Your metabolic rate is most closely correlated with your fat free mass (lean body mass). Your fat free mass is all the parts of your body that aren’t fat (rather obvious explanation)…this includes organs, bones, skeletal muscles and extracellular water.

The most metabolically active tissue of your lean body mass is your internal organs which account for approx 80% of your BMR.

The metabolic activity of your organs is tightly regulated and predictable and there isn’t much you can do to change it. Don’t bother comparing yourself to others (as someone else’s ability to burn calories will never help you burn them)

There are some pretty good metabolic rate calculators online that do a decent job of estimating metabolic rate.

I’m 6’0 tall and about 183lbs and my BMR comes out to around 1900 calories per day which is pretty accurate.

If you use a metabolic rate calculator online don’t bother with the activity factor calculation because they tend to waaay overestimate calories burned from activity. If anything just use the BMR calculated as a general guideline if what you need…oh, and probably go with the lowest estimate you can find as some of the calculators also overestimate quite a bit.

John

#10 – Obese people have slower basal metabolic rates than non-obese people

Answer: FALSE

This is a common fallacy to assume that obese or overweight people have a slower metabolic rate and that they are somehow just not burning enough calories. From here the thinking is they can lose weight by increasing their metabolism and in turn increase the amount of calories they are burning.

The reality is that overweight and obese people (when compared to height and age matched non overweight people) have a higher metabolism and would burn more calories on a daily basis.

A bigger body that has more mass and is processing more food is simply doing more work. Metabolism is just the description of all the metabolic processes going on in your body.

If you’re body is bigger than mine and you regularly eat more food than I do, then you’re body is busy processing that food and laying down more fat mass (which is more work). This actually translates to a higher metabolic rate or a greater degree of calories burned per day compared to someone who isn’t as big and not eating as much. None of this adds up to weight loss.

It just means that a bigger body has a bigger metabolism, and a smaller body has a smaller metabolism.

If you want to actually see some weight loss results/success I suggest you forget about the word metabolism. Strike it from your vocabulary and focus on eating less food.

Any weight loss product that is making a claim about changing or speeding up your metabolism is bogus and I wouldn’t waste even a second reading about it let alone a penny buying it.

John