Those who are overweight usually feel that having a'slow metabolism' is the reason they are unable to lose weight, blaming it on their inability to metabolise food rapidly enough.
Extensive study is being performed, however, to get a more detailed understanding of how people metabolise meals in order to discover distinct sorts of people who react differently to different foods. We can see that we have polymorphisms in our DNA and differences in our microbiota, but how that translates into variances in how we metabolise food is still unknown.
While there are likely to be variances in how some people react to particular situations compared to others, those differences are likely to be minor. For example, the studies will not reveal that one person can eat a potato and experience a big surge in glucose that lasts four hours, while another person eats the identical item and has no reaction. Simply said, it will not be as dramatic.
The fact that we don't normally eat single items, but rather a combination of foods, adds to the complexity. A potato with beans, as opposed to a potato with tuna, may have the same amount of carbohydrates and even protein, yet the two may induce quite different reactions. Because we eat foods rather than macronutrients, problems arise in any nutrition study.
Metabolic Differences
To begin with, a person who is overweight or obese has a faster metabolism than someone who is slimmer. Part of this is due to the fact that there is more body mass to metabolise, but it's also due to the fact that when you gain weight, your body's metabolic rate increases to compensate for the weight gain. When we discuss whether one individual can have a biologically slower metabolism than another, we're talking about whether two people of the same size can have differing metabolic rates in the broadest sense. For example, if you do the same exercise or eat the same food as someone else, you will burn more or fewer calories.
When gender, body size, and even body composition are taken into account, the variability between two people of the same size is rather similar. If you were trying to track calorie intake and expenditure, the variation between two people of the same size is so little that you wouldn't be able to detect it.
Weight Loss
We've already established that those who are overweight or obese have a faster metabolism than those who aren't. This is because they have a higher body mass, and their metabolism can speed up to compensate for the weight gain.
When a person loses weight as a result of diet or exercise, an energy deficit develops, resulting in a drop in metabolic rate. The concept of a'slow metabolism' comes into play here. It decreases as a result of your weight-loss attempts. It's not that losing weight becomes more difficult, but it does become more difficult to maintain that rate of weight loss indefinitely.
Consider our personalised healthy eating programme, which will always be your guide to healthy living, whether you're wanting to lose body fat and gain weight or looking for personalised recipes to fit your nutritional demands.