Year after year, a multitude of suffering folk try to regain their their health and the shape of their bodies ; and each year , tens of millions of people feel that they’ve “failed” because, no matter how hard they try , they simply feel incapable of succeeding in their ability to speed up their metabolism.

Regrettably , many people simply don’t understand the concept of metabolism and metabolic change. This, just as unfortunate , cannot always be considered to be as a result of anything they knowingly did or didn’t do .

There are a lot of food and supplement companies on the market who don’t want you to know fact from fiction . They want you to believe that always purchasing “low fat” foods is the only way to speed up your metabolism.

While, yes,  some low fat foods can play a role in a complete diet plan that is formulated to accelerate the metabolic process . Just by ingesting foods that are labelled as “LOW FAT” won’t do anything .

On the contrary , believe it or not, a lot of folks  oftentimes gain weight when they consume too many “low fat” products. Almost all of these products are loaded with calories from carbohydrates or proteins (which are still calories and still have to be utilized or they will be stored as belly fat).

As you can see, and more than likely experienced from yearsof trying to make sense of this whole metabolic mystery, this is a bewildering , nerve-racking , and, indeed , potentially depressing situation .

So, what exactly IS metabolism?

Some people think that metabolism is a type of organ, or a specific body part , that affects digestion.

Actually , metabolism is not any specific part of the body .

What it is, in fact, is the PROCESS by which the body converts food into energy . This is why, more often than not, you will hear the phrase ‘metabolic process’ being used in the same way as the term ‘metabolism’ – it is simply because they mean the same thing .

As we have seen above, it is the process of transforming food (e.g. nutrients) into fuel (e.g. energy) . The body uses this energy to conduct a vast array of essential functions . As a matter of fact,   if you had no metabolism – that is, if you had no metabolic process that was transforming food into energy – then you would have no life functions .

In fact , long before you realized that you couldn’t move a finger or lift your foot , all your inner bodily functions would have ceased ; because all the things needed for life – circulating blood, transforming oxygen into carbon dioxide, expelling potentially lethal wastes through the kidneys and so on – are all dependent on metabolism .

It is important to remember this whenever you hear someone mention that they have a slow metabolism . Although metabolic factors may be responsible for their unwanted belly fat, they certainly have a working metabolism. If that were not true, not even speaking would have been possible (because that too requires energy that comes from , you guessed it: metabolism!).

It is important to note here that , while we conveniently refer to the metabolic process as if it were a single function, it’s really a catchall term for countless functions that are happening inside the body. Every second of every minute of every day of your life – even when you are asleep – there are endless bodily functions going on through metabolism, or metabolic functioning.