You play basketball every weekend, you even go for a jog and lift a few weights once or twice a week. But it doesn’t seem to change the paunchy image you see in the mirror. What’s the deal?

 

Men have the misguided belief that exercise alone will control their weight no matter what they eat. But as a man approaches 40 he must also face the face that his metabolism is slowing down.

 

Metabolism is the rate at which a person’s body uses the calories he eats. It plays a vital role in the body’s ability to control weight. We certainly need to exercise regularly, but what and how we eat affects our metabolism more than how much we exercise.

 

Weight loss programs tout exercise as the primary way to burn calories, but only 200 or 300 calories are actually burned doing a normal half-hour workout. The few calories burned during the exercise period are not nearly as important as an exercise that will work the muscles, which fire up our metabolism long after the exercise, is over.

 

It’s no surprise that exercise plays an important role in a man’s weight and appearance. But you may not understand how the very act of eating affects your metabolism. Every time you eat, your body produces heat to burn calories. This production is call thermogenesis. Food stimulates thermogenesis, and thermogenesis stimulates your metabolism.

 

The majority of thermogenesis (up to 90 percent) takes place in your muscles. That’s why you certainly don’t want to go on a calorie-restricted diet to lose weight, because research has shown that such a diet destroys lean muscle.

 

I’m happy to tell you that losing weight does not mean starving yourself. Follow these two guidelines to boost your metabolism and see the results:

 

Eat more often. Every time you eat a snack or a meal, the heat of thermogenesis fires up your metabolism. As you eat more calories more often, you are shifting your metabolism into high gear. Instead of decreasing calories which slows your metabolism, you should “stoke the fires of thermogenesis” by eating more frequently during the day. So stop starving and start stoking!

 

Eat the right calories. There are three types of calories we can eat: fat calories, protein calories, and carbohydrate calories. Of the three types, fat is the major enemy of thermogenesis. Studies done on both animals and humans have shown that the higher the percentage of fat in the diet, the lower the thermogenic response to food. In other words, too much dietary fat slows your metabolism.

 

Carbohydrate calories are the preferred fuel to fire your metabolism. Results from many studies demonstrate that your body burns carbohydrates in the muscles rather than storing them as body fat.

 

You can speed up your metabolism by frequently eating fruits, vegetables and grains—and you will not gain weight. Obesity is very rare in geographical areas where high complex carbohydrate diets are eaten.

 

The apostle Paul tells us that we are all in a race. In order to compete, he advises self-control in all things (1 Cor. 9:24-27). As men of God, we are on earth to accomplish the spiritual purposes of God. But it we don’t care for our physical bodies, we may not fulfill those purposes or finish the race that is set before us. Let’s run the race to win!

 

By Gordon S. Tessler, a Ph.D. in nutrition.