What should your metabolic rate be

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The State of Victoria and the Department of Health shall not bear any liability for reliance by any user on the materials contained on this website. Skip to main content. Actions for this page Listen Print. Summary Read the full fact sheet. On this page. Two processes of metabolism Metabolic rate Metabolism and age-related weight gain Hormonal disorders of metabolism Genetic disorders of metabolism Where to get help.

Two processes of metabolism Our metabolism is complex — put simply it has two parts, which are carefully regulated by the body to make sure they remain in balance. They are: Catabolism — the breakdown of food components such as carbohydrates , proteins and dietary fats into their simpler forms, which can then be used to provide energy and the basic building blocks needed for growth and repair. Anabolism — the part of metabolism in which our body is built or repaired. Anabolism requires energy that ultimately comes from our food.

When we eat more than we need for daily anabolism, the excess nutrients are typically stored in our body as fat. Thermic effect of food also known as thermogenesis — your body uses energy to digest the foods and drinks you consume and also absorbs, transports and stores their nutrients. Thermogenesis accounts for about 5—10 per cent of your energy use.

Energy used during physical activity — this is the energy used by physical movement and it varies the most depending on how much energy you use each day. Physical activity includes planned exercise like going for a run or playing sport but also includes all incidental activity such as hanging out the washing, playing with the dog or even fidgeting!

Maintaining lean muscle mass also helps reduce the chance of injury when training, and exercise increases your daily energy expenditure. Amount of lean muscle tissue — muscle burns kilojoules rapidly. Crash dieting, starving or fasting — eating too few kilojoules encourages the body to slow the metabolism to conserve energy. Age — metabolism slows with age due to loss of muscle tissue, but also due to hormonal and neurological changes. Growth — infants and children have higher energy demands per unit of body weight due to the energy demands of growth and the extra energy needed to maintain their body temperature.

Gender — generally, men have faster metabolisms because they tend to be larger. Genetic predisposition — your metabolic rate may be partly decided by your genes. My Cart. Resting metabolic rate RMR is the amount of energy the body burns during rest and the measurement is sometimes used as a benchmark for how efficiently your metabolism is working.

If you are focussed on maintaining or developing your fitness, you might be wondering what is a good resting metabolic rate and whether you should be trying to improve yours. What is an average resting metabolic rate? There are lots of different ways of measuring resting metabolic rate outside of a clinical setting and we are all different so there is no easy graph or table to see how you measure up.

However, a rough, average, guide is that your resting metabolic rate will require around calories for men and calories for women, per day. Resting metabolic rate vs basal metabolic rate Basal metabolic rate BMR and RMR are both ways of assessing the calories used for your body to function.

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. We talk about metabolism like it's something we can manipulate by gulping a pill, downing some green tea, or running faster.

You've seen the articles headlined "Boost your metabolism" or "Try this high-metabolism diet to lose weight. But this obscures many truths about this essential, yet still somewhat mysterious, biological process. Here are nine facts to help you understand metabolism, and how to think about it in the context of weight gain and weight loss. A lot of people talk about their metabolism like it's a muscle or organ that they can flex or somehow control.

But in reality, your metabolism refers to a series of chemical processes in each cell that turn the calories you eat into fuel to keep you alive, said Michael Jensen , a researcher who studies obesity and metabolism at the Mayo Clinic. Your "basal" metabolic rate measures how many calories you burn while you're doing nothing, he added. The body's major organs — the brain, liver, kidneys, and heart — account for about half of the energy burned at rest, while fat, the digestive system, and especially the body's muscles account for the rest.

There are three main ways your body burns energy each day: 1 the basal metabolism — energy used for your body's basic functioning while at rest; 2 the energy used to break down food also known as the thermic effect of food ; and 3 the energy used in physical activity.

As we explored in a feature , one very underappreciated fact about the body is that your resting metabolism accounts for a huge amount of the total calories you burn each day.

Physical activity, on the other hand, accounts for a tiny part of your total energy expenditure — about 10 to 30 percent unless you're a professional athlete or have a highly physically demanding job. Digesting food accounts for about 10 percent. It's true that two people with the same size and body composition can have different metabolic rates. One can consume a huge meal and gain no weight, while the other has to carefully count calories to not gain weight. Researchers have found some predictors of how fast a person's metabolism will be.

These include: the amount of lean muscle and fat tissue in the body, age, and genetics though researchers don't know why some families have higher or lower metabolic rates. Sex also matters, since women with any given body composition and age burn fewer calories than comparable men. You can't easily measure your resting metabolic rate in a precise way there are some commercially available tests, but the best measurements come from research studies that use expensive equipment like a metabolic chamber.

But you can get a rough estimate of your resting metabolic rate by plugging some basic variables into online calculators like this one. It'll tell you how many calories you're expected to burn each day, and if you eat that many and your weight stays the same, it's probably correct. The effect happens gradually , even if you have the same amount of fat and muscle tissue. So when you're 60, you burn fewer calories at rest than when you're Jensen said this continual decline starts as young as age 18 — and why this happens is also another metabolism question researchers haven't answered.

There's a lot of hype around "speeding up your metabolism" and losing weight by exercising more to build muscle, eating different foods, or taking supplements. But it's a metabolism myth. While there are certain foods — like coffee, chili, and other spices — that may speed the basal metabolic rate up just a little, the change is so negligible and short-lived, it would never have an impact on your waistline, said Jensen.

Building more muscles, however, can be marginally more helpful. However, while your RMR refers to the number of calories your body burns while at rest, your BMR is the minimum number of calories your body burns to just exist, without any external influences. Although BMR is slightly more accurate, the difference is only notable in clinical settings. Not only is RMR an accurate estimate of BMR, but it is also sufficient for determining your daily calorie needs, and easy to calculate.

You can calculate your RMR to find out your personal number. Everyone's resting metabolism or BMR is different. Factors that affect your RMR include your weight, gender, age, and body composition. For example, someone who is very large and muscular needs more energy more calories to maintain his body at rest than someone who is very small.

Many calorie calculators, like the one at Verywell Fit, determine your RMR, then account for your daily exercise and non-exercise activity to determine the number of calories you burn each day. But you can also get your RMR with an online calculator, by doing the math yourself, or by going to a gym or lab. Remember that if you search for one, you can search for "resting metabolic rate calculator" or "basal metabolic rate calculator" and both will provide the same number.

You can also use these links to find a reliable RMR calculator:. In order to use one of these online RMR calculators, you simply need to know your height, your weight, your age, and your gender. If you love math, you can also calculate RMR on your own. Some health clubs and clinics can do metabolic testing to provide you with your RMR. The test usually takes an hour or so and is often combined with testing to determine your calorie needs and heart rate targets for exercise.

So what can you expect from the test? Popular testing protocols require that you wear a mask for a short period of time around 15 minutes while resting. The mask measures the exchange of gasses to determine the number of calories you burn when your body is at complete rest.

If you do exercise testing as well, you'll wear the mask while on a treadmill or a bike to determine how many calories you burn while your body is working. And you might wonder if your RMR is normal. If you change your body weight, your RMR will change. Also, as you age, RMR usually decreases. Other than that, however, you can't really change your RMR.