4. A Crash Course In Metabolism

Ola! So some dude messaged me asking for a part 4 of my fitness tips, which was surprising coz I was pretty sure no one was reading.

I bet most people have stopped eating "healthy" either because walking around shirtless in school or office is not allowed, or because they didn't reach their sexy goals in time and decided to procrastinate til the next beach season(nag t-shirt ka sa boracay noh?) If you're the latter, listen up, because this note will cover tips on maximizing METABOLISM. Metabo-whut? Metabolism. For the purposes of this note, it is defined as that thing that helps you burn calories from the food that you eat. The higher the metabolic rate of a creature, the bigger the chance that that creature is a sexy creature. It is a super-mega-tunginuh-important concept that can make or break your fitness goals.

DISCLAIMER:  These "tips" are based on several scientific studies.  Like most scientific studies, there are those that conflict with others.  For ME, I've lived by these principles and found that they work. Feel free to not believe if you've read something which tells you different.

Let's keep things simple, shall we? 

RATE OF METABOLISM
The rate of metabolism is initially determined by heredity. That means if you come from a line of cute pudgy people, if you sit down the entire day and do absolutely nothing, and another person who came from a line of cute but not pudgy ancestors sat beside you to also do absolutely nothing, comparatively, the other person will burn more calories than you. Unfair right? So does that mean you are utterly hopeless? Of course not. The good thing about metabolism is that it can be controlled.

Burn them mothahumping jiggly salbabidas by speeding up your metabolism. How? Well, other factors that determine the rate of M is as follows :
A) age, B) lean body mass, C) diet, and D) level of physical activities.

A) AGE:
Metabolism slows down at about 5% per decade after 40(according to some reliable website I read before.) So no, slathering on a tub of Pond's Magic Youth Whatever cream will not help maintain it. What does this entail? It means you'd better learn to control your M before it starts to slow down, otherwise, the effort it would take to achieve your dream body increases the longer we wait. Can you imagine just learning how to bench press at 40 to build lean muscle(which affects the metabolic rate)? It's not impossible, but gahd the effort it will take, bro.

B) LEAN BODY MASS:
basically, the body muscle without the taba. It should always be a goal to have a high percentage of lean body mass because more muscle tissues means more calories burned. So if again, a pudgy you sat beside a not so pudgy muscle-bound gorilla man who came from a line of pudgy folks, guess who burns more calories? Ze gorilla, monsieur.

So this means that as we gain more machoness, it's easier to reach and remain sexy. From my experience, if you're lucky enough to have a gym to workout in, compound workouts will help build the needed muscle mass because several muscle groups are activated. To those black-sando-wearing newbies at the gym, I say to you: stop focusing on those bicep curls to portray machoness, you're not fooling anyone. Get down and do real overall body workouts.

C) LEVEL OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES:
Now this I find most interesting. Often I get asked, "How often do you workout, Siocolator?" to which I answer "Everyday, 4 to 5 times a week, and rest on weekends, but the workouts are usually just 15-20mins." Usually the reply is "Potaaa, nakakatamad naman yun." True, it seems daunting at first, but I shall explain why that works better than once or twice a week, 2 hours per workout.

The metabolism of a person after exercising is revved up for the next 24-36 hours. This means that for the next 24-36 hours, your supot-pedicab metabolism has now turned into a not so supot-pedicab, or maybe even turned into a full blown motorcycle. So if you spread your workouts into short bursts of intense exercises, your metabolism will not have time to slow down. If your logic is slow, this means that since there's no down time, you'll burn more calories for the entire week versus that of the other method.

Think about it. Think about how much more calories you can burn by doing that. One of the best principles I've applied to my life came from my favorite fitness guru(who I will not name coz I emailed him asking about something but hindi siya nagreply, tae siya) who said: "You can only either workout hard or workout long, but you can't do both."

So the next time you go gymming for an hour and then start strolling for 30-45mins on that treadmill, humming to the beat of Justin Bieber, ask yourself: Do I honestly believe that Ryan Reynolds got that 8 pack doing the same shit? A good work out will leave you gasping for air and cursing that donut you had for merienda. A long workout means there's no intensity, that's why you're still able to do more. Yeah sure, you get man boobs from all that heavy lifting and long rest periods, but you know what you also have? A gut.

D) DIET:
The word that brings fear in them sugar munchers. Them sugar-munchers think that proper dieting consists of not eating anything the whole day, except maybe that slice of cheesecake. " Yum. Cheese contains milk. Milk contains protein. I have rationalized it to be a healthy meal. I am brilliant. Yes. That hunger pain in my stomach is definitely burning my salbabidas. More! Mooore!"

Yes, I believe that's how the conversation in their heads go.

Three important concepts here: WHEN you eat is just as important as WHAT you eat and HOW MUCH you eat.

WHEN you eat: the usual advice is every 3-4 hours, have a meal or a snack, but don't pig out. Why this works? After 4 hours, the body goes into starvation mode. Your metabolism slows down A LOT. Yung pedicab mo nagka-flat, bro. To avoid a turnilyo in your gulong, keep the M up by having a snack ready. Another problem with starvation mode is that the first thing your body goes for nutrients is not the taba, but the hard earned muscle fibers. So the muscles are sacrificed first(I have no idea how to reverse this, please consult God Almighty, our creator.) When to eat before and after a workout is a long discussion, next time na yan.

Also, don't believe that crap that you can't eat after 7pm because it will turn into fat. Tunginuh, may relo katawan mo, bro? Bionic ka pala eh. Just don't pig out 3 hours before sleeping, but keep yourself from starving by drinking skim milk(with whey protein if extra rich ka) just before sleeping like a kyot little baby.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that there are some who don't believe about timing and resort to what they call "Intermittent Fasting."  Like I said, there are a lot of conflicting claims about fitness, and unless you've personally studied and compared the different types of theories, feel free to believe what you want to believe.

WHAT to eat is important too. WHAT to eat before and after working out is a different topic and deserves an entirely different note. On the top of my head, food that boosts metabolism are those that contain caffeine(coffee or tea), brazil nuts, hot shit like sili, cinnamon... Lots to choose from. I dare you to put them all in a blender and drink it.

What about them fat burners? Eh... Stay away from that crap. Here's the truth about fat burners: they USED to be effective because before, they contained ephedra(i think that's the name), which is the same drug used in making illegal drugs. The ephedra made them effective, but now it's been banned so they replaced the ephedra with a lot of caffeine to have that "thermogenic" whatever effect. Throw it in a fancy bottle with fancy words, viola, uto-uto ka nanaman. You'll get shivers, sure, but the effectiveness is all in your head. Cross my heart and hope to die, this is true.

HOW MUCH is a question of your size. Obviously if you're a 185 pound man, you'll need more food than that 120 pound dude. The way I explain how much is like this: every person has a bag wherein he can put food. The bag represents the amount of calories burned per day, and its size is determined by the said factors affecting metabolism. The more body mass, the bigger the bag. If your bag overspills, the amount spilled will eventually reflect how much you gain. What you gain (fat or lean muscle) is determined by the type of food you put in your bag and whether or not you work out. Simple enough? So you know your body better than anyone, and only you can assess how big your bag is.

So there, a short summary about metabolism. Hope that this helps clear things up for some people. If my notes can inspire just one person to live better, pwede na!