by Sandra Piddock

Created on: July 04, 2010

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the minimum calorific requirement to keep a body functioning while at rest. In other words, it's the calories you'd need to stay in bed all day. Even when you're doing nothing, your body is still working to keep you breathing, circulate the blood around your body and build and repair cells. These hidden activities account for around 70% of your daily caloric expenditure.

BMR helps to calculate how many calories an individual needs to lose, gain or maintain weight, and it's different for everyone. You may have a high or low metabolic rate because of your genes, age, weight or gender. Men tend to have more muscle and less body fat than women, and so have a higher BMR. BMR drops by around 2 per cent per decade in adults, and heavier people have a higher BMR than lighter people.

Some people may attribute weight gain, or failure to lose weight, to a slow metabolism. However, metabolism is a natural function, which your body regulates to meet its needs. If you try a crash diet to lose weight quickly, the metabolism will slow down to conserve energy levels. So you can't control the speed of your metabolism in order to lose weight, but you can control other factors, such as the amount of physical activity you do.

While reducing your food intake will slow metabolism, meaning calories are burned off more slowly, increasing activity will speed up the metabolism, so it makes sense to combine a healthy diet with exercise in order to lose weight. As an added bonus, muscle burns up more calories than fat and, as exercise builds muscle, it follows that exercise will speed up your metabolism.

One pound of fat burns two calories a day, while a pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day, so the more you exercise, the higher your BMR. Aerobic exercise such as walking, swimming and cycling will also speed up your metabolism for up to 8 hours after exercise. Strength and resistance exercises such as weight lifting will not boost the BMR, but they do build up lean muscle mass and whittle away body fat, which will boost the BMR.

As the BMR naturally slows down during late afternoon and the evening, avoid eating large meals later in the day. After a night's sleep, your metabolism is slow, and if you don't eat breakfast, it will slow down even more, as the body thinks it's entering a period of starvation. Eating breakfast will boost your metabolism, as well as removing the temptation to snack on unhealthy foods before lunch.

Metabolism also increases with the digestion of food. While it may be tempting to skip meals in order to lose weight, the metabolism slows down after several hours without food, in preparation for starvation. A diet where you eat 5 - 6 small meals a day instead of 2 - 3 large ones will boost your metabolism, helping you to burn calories and lose weight.

You can't control your age, gender or genetic history - all of which play a part in your individual BMR. However, you can control the calories you eat, the timing of your meals and your activity levels, and these factors will enable you to boost your BMR and achieve weight loss.

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