Metabolic Fitness

"Being fit also includes metabolic fitness. It relates to the number of calories you require to survive and the number of calories you burn during physical activity. Recall that metabolism is the sum of all chemical reactions that occur in the human body to conduct life’s processes. Some are catabolic reactions that break down nutrients to supply the body with cellular energy. The rate at which a person burns calories depends on body composition, gender, age, nutritional status, physical activity, and genetics. Increasing your daily activity and shedding excess body fat helps to improve metabolic fitness. Physical activity also makes weight management easier because it increases energy needs and lean body mass. During moderate to vigorous activity, energy expenditure raises well above the resting rate. With continuous exercise over time, regular exercise increases lean body mass as well. At rest, lean tissues use more energy than fat tissue therefore increasing basal metabolism. The combination of increased energy output, energy expenditure and basal needs over a long period of time can have a major impact on total energy expenditure. The more energy you expend, the more foods you are able to consume while maintaining a healthy weight. Any improvement to metabolic fitness is beneficial and means a decrease in the risk for developing diabetes, or other chronic conditions. One measurement of metabolic fitness is basal metabolic rate, or BMR, which is a measurement of the amount of energy required for the body to maintain its basic functions while at rest, i.e. breathing, heart beats, liver and kidney function, and so on. On average, BMR accounts for between 50 and 70 percent of a person’s total daily energy expenditure. Different factors can affect the BMR. For example, a slender person who is tall has more body surface area and therefore has a higher RMR relative to their body mass (weight). Also, muscle utilizes more energy at rest than fat, so a person with more muscle mass has a higher BMR. A second measurement of metabolic fitness is the number of calories burned during physical activity. The amount of calories burned depends on how much oxygen is delivered to tissues, and how efficiently metabolic reactions consume oxygen and, therefore, expend calories. One of the best estimates of energy expenditure during exercise is how much oxygen a person consumes. Recall that VO2 max is a measure of the maximum cardiorespiratory capacity to deliver oxygen to the body, especially to working muscles during exercise. Greater VO2 max is indicative of better cardiovascular fitness. In contrast to RMR, VO2 max increases significantly with exercise training due to training adaptations that increase the body’s ability to deliver oxygen to working tissues and an increased capacity of muscles to take up and utilize oxygen."