Metabolism is a term that describes how your body takes the food and drinks you consume and turns them into usable energy. Each person has a specific metabolic rate, which depends on factors such as age, gender and activity level. When you exercise, you boost your body's metabolism for at least a short period of time.
Understanding Metabolism
Your body metabolizes the foods and liquids you consume by combining them with oxygen, according to the Mayo Clinic. This biochemical process creates energy. Functions in your body that rely on the efficiency of your metabolism include blood circulation, breathing, regulation of your hormone levels and cell growth and repair.
Basal Metabolic Rate
Your body requires a certain amount of food energy to perform its basic functions, according to the Diet Channel. This level of energy consumption is called your basal metabolic rate, or BMR. Overall, roughly 60 to 70 percent of the calories you consume go toward the maintenance of your basal metabolism. Additionally, there are a number of factors that can alter or influence your BMR, including your age, the temperature of your environment, your height and gender, your body's relative muscle mass and your general level of emotional and mental stress.
Exercise and Metabolism
Your exercise level also significantly affects your BMR, the Diet Channel reports. When you perform aerobic exercises such as stair-stepping, walking or cycling, you temporarily increase your normal basal metabolism, according to SpineUniverse. Depending on the intensity of your workout, this metabolism increase can last as long as several hours. However, if you regularly perform strength-building exercises such as weightlifting or resistance band training, you can increase your body's muscle mass. Since muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain, increases in your muscle mass typically result in long-term increases in your basal metabolism.
Additional Factors
In addition to boosting your metabolism, aerobic and strength-building exercises directly affect your weight by helping your body burn more calories, SpineUniverse reports. However, if you combine high amounts of aerobic exercise with a low-calorie diet, you can actually lose some of your muscle mass. In turn, this loss of muscle can trigger long-term decreases in your basal metabolism.
Considerations
Your body naturally adjusts its metabolism to meet current conditions, the Mayo Clinic notes. If you eat well and exercise, your metabolism will adjust to accommodate these factors. If you eat poorly and don't exercise, your metabolism will adjust to accommodate those factors. For these reasons, your metabolism is seldom to blame for weight gain. Instead, you typically gain weight as a consequence of taking in more calories than you burn off.
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