What is a metabolic diet and how can you measure your metabolism?
Humanity has embraced dieting practices for countless reasons. From shedding pounds to enhancing physical appearance, optimizing health, and maximizing performance, people understand the significance of their food choices. And they’re not mistaken. Extensive research confirms that our diets profoundly impact both our minds and bodies (1). If you’re part of the bodybuilding or fitness community, you’ve likely encountered diets like low-carb, high-protein, or intermittent fasting, all of which fall under metabolic diets aimed at weight loss.
In this post, we’ll dive into what metabolic diets are, how they work, and the role your metabolism plays in the process. Additionally, we’ll introduce Lumen, a cutting-edge device that can help you measure and optimize your metabolism.
What Is the Metabolic Diet?
Metabolic diets are nutrition plans that focus on how your body metabolizes food. The goal of a metabolic diet is to increase your body’s metabolism to help you lose weight efficiently by influencing how your body converts food into energy.
Breaking Down Metabolism
Metabolism is how your body generates the energy needed to function through chemical reactions in each cell (2). In this process, calories combine with oxygen to release energy. The type of food you eat plays a significant role in how your metabolism operates. Some foods are easier to break down and metabolize, while others are more likely to be stored as fat, leading to weight gain.
A faster metabolism can help you burn more calories quickly, which can lead to weight loss, especially when combined with a calorie deficit. A calorie deficit occurs when you consume fewer calories than your body needs each day. This forces your body to burn fat stores for energy, leading to further weight loss.
Factors such as weight, age, and physical activity level affect your metabolism. For example, being older and heavier can lower your metabolic rate, making it harder to lose weight. Metabolic diets aim to optimize your metabolism and overcome these challenges.
Measuring Your Metabolism with Lumen
Understanding and optimizing your metabolism is key to the success of any metabolic diet. Lumen is a device that allows you to measure your metabolism in real-time. By analyzing your breath, Lumen provides insights into whether your body is burning fats or carbs for fuel, helping you make informed dietary choices to achieve your weight loss goals.
Using Lumen, you can personalize your metabolic diet by understanding how your body responds to different foods and adjusting your eating habits accordingly. This data-driven approach can enhance the effectiveness of your metabolic diet, ensuring that you’re fueling your body in the best possible way.
Types of Metabolic Diets
Metabolic diets go beyond just low-calorie foods and focus on the types of food you eat. The goal is to optimize your metabolism so that you can lose weight without necessarily increasing exercise or physical activity.
Below are some common types of metabolic diets:
- Low-Carb
- High-Protein
- Ketogenic
- Intermittent Fasting
- Atkins
Are Metabolic Diets Effective & How Do They Work?
Understanding the concept behind metabolic diets is crucial to knowing how they work. Weight loss occurs when there is an energy deficit in the body. This deficit can be created by exercising more, which causes the body to burn more energy.
Dieting, particularly by reducing calorie intake, is another effective way to create this energy deficit. By consuming fewer calories, your body has fewer calories to burn and store as fat. To do this effectively, you need to know how many calories your body typically uses in a day to maintain your current weight, known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Once you know this number, you can aim to eat less than that.
Metabolic diets aim to increase the energy your body uses without reducing your calorie intake or increasing exercise. Instead, you adjust the type of food you eat, when you eat, or how often you eat.
For example, a low-carb and high-protein diet focuses on the type of food you consume. Research shows that the body expends more energy digesting protein than carbohydrates (3). As a result, eating high-protein foods could lead to a higher energy deficit, even if you’re consuming the same number of calories as before.
Metabolic diets may also recommend eating certain foods at specific times of the day. For instance, consuming carbohydrates close to exercise can increase the calories used for energy, preventing them from being stored as fat. Moreover, eating protein frequently keeps your body working to digest it, increasing the calories burned.
Your metabolic diet will also consider the type of carbohydrates you consume. Foods high in fiber and complex carbs require more energy to digest than refined carbs. As a result, metabolic diets often include limiting processed and junk foods.
FAQs
What foods are in a metabolic diet?
The types of food in your metabolic diet depend on the specific diet you follow. For example, a high-protein metabolic diet will emphasize consuming lots of protein with every meal, such as lean meats or plant-based options like chickpeas.
What are the 5 metabolic superfoods?
Metabolic superfoods are believed to optimize metabolic function. These include lean meat, legumes, fish, nuts, and seeds. These foods are typically high in protein and essential minerals.
Do metabolic diets really work?
The core principles of metabolic diets are based on proven science, especially regarding weight loss (4). However, more research is needed to determine the long-term effects of these diets.
Wrapping Up
Metabolic diets aim to enhance weight loss by optimizing your metabolism. Rather than solely focusing on creating a caloric deficit, metabolic diets emphasize the type and timing of food consumption to increase energy expenditure. It’s essential to understand your body’s average calorie burn before starting this diet to ensure it’s effective and you’re not consuming too many calories.
Using tools like Lumen can provide personalized insights into your metabolism, helping you tailor your diet for maximum effectiveness. As with any diet, adherence to the guidelines plays a significant role in your results. While more research is needed to determine the superiority of metabolic diets over other methods, getting your body into an energy deficit remains a tried-and-true approach to weight loss (5).
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more nutrition advice!
Follow Generation Iron on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more nutrition advice!Â
References
- Lachance, L., & Ramsey, D. (2015). Food, mood, and brain health: implications for the modern clinician. Missouri medicine, 112(2), 111–115.
- Judge, A., & Dodd, M. S. (2020). Metabolism. Essays in biochemistry, 64(4), 607–647. https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20190041Â
- Moon, J., & Koh, G. (2020). Clinical Evidence and Mechanisms of High-Protein Diet-Induced Weight Loss. Journal of obesity & metabolic syndrome, 29(3), 166–173. https://doi.org/10.7570/jomes20028Â
- Kim J. Y. (2021). Optimal Diet Strategies for Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance. Journal of obesity & metabolic syndrome, 30(1), 20–31. https://doi.org/10.7570/jomes20065Â
- Freire R. (2020). Scientific evidence of diets for weight loss: Different macronutrient composition, intermittent fasting, and popular diets. Nutrition (Burbank, Los Angeles County, Calif.), 69, 110549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2019.07.001
