Top 7 Reasons Why You Have A Slow Metabolism

Is your metabolism as slow as a snail? Do you think that your slow  metabolism contributes to your weight gain? Metabolism is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. Even when you are resting, your body needs energy for breathing, circulating blood and repairing cells and allowing muscle growth. The number of calories that your body is using for these basic functions is known as your basal metabolic rate. Lots of factors determine your basal metabolic rate:

1. Body size and composition

Overweight people with more muscle mass burn more calories, even during the rest, so they are more likely to have a faster metabolic rate not a slower one. So with less muscle fat one tends to digest food at the rate of a snails pace.

2. Sex

Men probably have less body fat and more muscle mass than women of the same age that is the reason they burn more calories faster.

3. Age

When you get older, your muscle mass decreases, which cuts down the rate at which you burn calories.

While many people believe that their extra kilo’s are charged in a not active metabolism, in most cases the problem arises from taking more calories than are burned off. Even those people who exercise regularly compensate for their increased activity by overeating the wrong foods after their excessive exercising. They are sure that they burned off more calories than they did in reality. However, in some cases, a low metabolic rate can play a great role in weight gain. Let’s have a look on the most common causes of a slow metabolism.

4. Eating too many calories

When people receive calories more than they burn off it leads to increasing blood sugar. Tissues can’t assimilate partly divided glucose. It accumulates in cells and causes slowing down of the metabolism.

Even though there are some marked lifestyle habits and things you can’t control like your advancing age that can cause a slow metabolism, a decreased metabolic rate is usually the result of an underlying hormonal disorder.

5. Cushing’s Syndrome

A disorder that develops when your tissues are exposed to cortisol- a hormone responsible for maintaining the metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates and fats- for an extended period of time. This prolonged exposure slows down metabolism, which can result in obesity, increased fat around the neck and a rounded face.

6. Hypothyroidism

A disorder which is characterized by an underactive thyroid gland. When this gland does not produce enough thyroid hormones all of the processes taking place in our body including metabolism slow down.

7. Diabetes

It is not yet completely clear why diabetics have slow metabolisms, but they seem to have more trouble with taking off weight than non-diabetics. This fact may be related to their higher blood sugar levels which fools the body into believing there is lots of energy around, resulting in a slowing down in metabolism.

If you have a slow metabolism you should look into ways of making it faster in order to help you with weight lose.

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