What Metabolic Age Reveals About Your Health
Many people have heard of the metabolism, but we often don’t fully understand what it does and just how important it is to our overall health. Metabolic health plays an important role in weight loss, as a better functioning metabolism converts more of the food you eat into energy instead of storing it as body fat. This mechanism is a crucial influence on how quickly or easily we lose weight.
One valuable metric for understanding your metabolic health is metabolic age, a measure of just how efficient your metabolism is. Understanding how to take charge of your metabolic health and improve your metabolic age will go a long way toward promoting your weight loss efforts.
Understanding Metabolism
The metabolism is the process of how the body converts the foods and drinks we consume into energy. At a basic level, your metabolic rate is the amount of energy your body needs to function.
However, everyone has a different metabolic rate, as we all need different levels of energy to maintain our regular bodily functions and daily activities. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of energy that your body expends at rest to maintain basic physiological functions.
The more activity you engage in throughout the day, the more energy your body will have to create through your metabolism.
Several factors influence metabolic rate:
- Age – As we age, our metabolism tends to slow down and takes longer to convert food into energy, often storing more calories as fat.
- Body composition – Body composition plays an important role in how quickly your metabolism functions. For example, when you have more muscle, your body uses more energy to maintain it, but more body fat often slows down the metabolism.
- Physical activity – How often you exercise will affect your metabolic rate. The more activity you engage in, the more active your metabolism is.
- Genetics – Some people have a naturally faster or naturally slower metabolism based on their genetics.
The metabolism is linked to several key areas of how the body functions, including energy levels, weight, weight maintenance, and more. Understanding your metabolic health can give you a wealth of valuable information about how you can improve your health.
How Is Metabolic Age Different From Chronological Age?
Your metabolic age is a measure that highlights how efficiently your body burns calories and creates energy in relation to your chronological age. The younger your metabolic age, the better, as a younger age signifies that your metabolic age is functioning more efficiently.
Although age is an influencing factor in your metabolism, your metabolic age and chronological age can differ based on factors like stress, diet, and lifestyle habits.
Of course, our chronological age is the number we can’t change based on our birthdate, but it doesn’t have to limit us. Comparing your metabolic age to your chronological age is a helpful reference for what level of metabolic function is typically expected of someone in your age range and whether you have room for improvement.
As you interpret your metabolic age, keep the following in mind:
- If your metabolic age is younger than your chronological age – A younger metabolic age suggests that your metabolism is functioning more efficiently than someone in your typical age range and is a sign of a healthy metabolism.
- If your metabolic age is equal – A metabolic age that’s equal to your chronological age indicates that your metabolism is functioning as expected for someone in your age range.
- If your metabolic age is older – This would indicate that your metabolism is not functioning as efficiently as someone else in your age group and that there is room for improvement.
Importance of Metabolic Age in Weight Loss
Understanding your metabolic age can be a valuable piece of information as you navigate your weight loss journey. To lose weight, it’s important to have an efficient metabolism capable of converting the food you consume into energy.
When your metabolism is slower, your body has a harder time converting the calories you consume into energy. As a result, the calories you eat are more likely to be stored as body fat. A more efficient metabolism is also a crucial factor in losing body fat since your metabolism converts energy from stored body fat. When your metabolism uses this stored fat as energy, you start to lose weight.
With the right lifestyle changes influencing metabolic repair, like a healthy diet and added exercise, your metabolism will become more efficient at converting energy and will be better equipped to burn body fat so you lose weight.
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re:vitalize programs address both body and mind, empowering you with the foods, tools, and habits you need for long-term weight loss success.
How To Calculate Metabolic Age
When it comes to metabolic age, the lower, the better. There are a few potential ways you can calculate your metabolic age using simple health metrics to gather an understanding of how efficiently your metabolism is working.
Calculating metabolic age often starts with understanding your basal metabolic rate, or the rate at which your metabolism functions at rest. In a simple equation, the calculation for metabolic rate looks like this:
For men: BMR = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (years) + 5
For women: BMR = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (years) - 161
Once you determine your basal metabolic rate with the above equations, you can compare your metabolic rate to others in your age range. However, keep in mind that this calculation is rather general because there are a lot of factors that it just does not account for.
There are better, more detailed ways to measure metabolic age if you have the right data. At re:vitalize weight loss & wellness, we use special technology to perform a thorough metabolic age analysis using several key biomarkers. Using a body composition scan, we’ll measure markers like your body fat percentage, lean muscle mass, bone density, and visceral fat level.
With all this information, we’ll then provide an accurate picture of your metabolic age. Through our holistic weight loss and wellness programs, we’ll benchmark and measure your metabolic age so we can track improvement over time.
How To Improve Metabolic Age
We unfortunately can’t make ourselves younger, but we can improve our metabolic age and encourage our metabolism to become more efficient. All it takes is healthy lifestyle choices and the right amount of discipline to boost metabolic function and make our bodies better at converting energy.
Some ways to improve your metabolic age include:
- Increase physical activity – When you are more active, your body needs to create more energy to use, increasing your metabolic rate.
- Incorporate healthy eating habits – Eating healthier foods with more nutrients will encourage a more efficient metabolism. Meanwhile, heavy meals with sugary, fatty foods can slow your metabolism and make you more likely to store food as fat.
- Increase your hydration levels – Studies show that drinking water can increase your metabolic rate and improve your ability to expend energy, making it important to stay hydrated.
- Improve your sleep – A lack of sleep can disrupt your metabolic function, slowing down your metabolism and making you less likely to engage in activities that burn energy throughout the day.
- Implement stress management techniques – Stress can slow or disrupt your metabolism, as it puts your body into “fight or flight” mode, prioritizing other functions over metabolic functions.
A metabolic repair program can provide the right guidance and accountability in helping you make the right lifestyle choices for a healthier metabolism and improved weight loss efforts.
Improve Your Metabolic Age with re:vitalize
Metabolic health plays a valuable role in improving your weight loss efforts and in your overall health in general. Understanding your metabolic age is an excellent tool for understanding how efficiently your metabolism is functioning and what steps you may need to take to improve it and achieve healthy, sustainable weight loss.
Our programs at re:vitalize weight loss and wellness are designed to promote your metabolic health while supporting you in your weight loss journey. Through our holistic weight loss programs, we take a comprehensive approach to measuring your metabolic age and use it as a benchmark for your health while measuring improvement along the way. We’ll perform a Body Composition & Metabolic Age Analysis to understand important biomarkers like body fat percentage and visceral fat levels and use them to calculate your metabolic age.
From there, our expert health coaches and board-certified nutritionists provide consistent guidance and accountability through regular check-ins to support you in your journey. We also offer virtual weight loss programs and a flexible lifestyle program to make metabolic age improvement and achieving your weight loss goals even more accessible.
Schedule a consultation with our team to discover your metabolic age and learn more about how we can help you achieve your weight loss goals while improving your metabolic function.
