Metabolic rate

b) A person loses mass when the energy content of the food taken in is less than the amount of energy expended by the body.

What is your metabolism? What is metabolic rate?

You need energy to fuel the chemical reactions in your body to keep you alive and these reactions are called your metabolism.

Different people have small differences in their resting metabolic rates because eg muscle needs more energy than fatty tissue, so more muscular people tend to have a higher metabolic rate because of the higher ratio of muscle to fat.

Bigger people tend to have a higher metabolic rate because more energy is needed to maintain a greater mass of cells.

On average men tend to have a greater metabolic rate because they tend to have a greater proportion of muscle.

Exercise increases the amount of energy expended by the body.

Athletes or people engaged in heavy manual work would need a greater energy (calorie) intake.

eg the energy need for cycling at low speed is about 4x that you need for sleeping, and you need 4x the energy for cycling to rapidly climb stairs!

Your metabolic rate can stay up even after you have finished engaging in more physical exercise, particularly if it has been strenuous.

Regular exercise can…