Understanding Your Resting Metabolic Rate and 10 Things that Affect Your Metabolic Rate, By: Dave DePew

Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is...

• RMR is the rate at which you burn energy or calories at rest.

• Lean Body Mass is the main contributing componenent of energy expenditure.

10 Things that affect your Metabolic Rate...

1. Muscle
Adding more muscle will increase your RMR and losing muscle will decrease RMR. 

2. Age
As we get older our RMR decreases. Exercise can go a long way to helping us maintain our RMR as we age.

3. Genetics 
Our genetics can influence our RMR.

4. Climate 
Living in a cold or hot environment can increase your RMR. We simply expend more energy when moving around in cold or hot weather. Cold weather climates increase the bodies efforts to regulate its temperature more than hot climates.
 
5. Frequent Meals 
The Small Frequent 5-6 meals will do much more to increase your RMR.
 
6. Pregnancy 
Pregnancy will increase your RMR. You are now eating for two just don't eat twice as much! 

7. Gender
While very slight, studies show that gender can effect the metabolic activity between men a women showing that men with the same lean body mass burn slightly more calories at rest. 

8. Crash dieting 
Most diets cause you to lose lean muscle as you drop fat. A nutrition program that doesn't protect lean mass as you lose body fat will decrease your RMR making it more difficult for you to lose fat later. 

9. Surface area
The more mass there is the more our body must expend energy to keep us comfortable. Big and Tall people need more calories to maintain body weight. However, the more fat we have the less cold environments will influence RMR. 

10. Hydration
When we are dehydrated we use or nutrients are utilized less efficiently. Drink water to burn the fat!