Metabolism is the rate at which your body burns its way through
calories just to keep itself alive—to keep your heart beating, your
lungs breathing, your blood pumping, and your mind fantasizing
about the Caribbean while crunching year-end accounting figures.
Your body is burning calories all the time, even while you’re
reading this sentence. The average woman burns about 10 calories
per pound of body weight ever day; the average man, 11 calories
per pound.
There are three main types of calorie burn that happen throughout your day. Understand how they work, and you’ll understand
exactly why the Abs Diet is going to turn your body into
a fat-burning machine.
Calorie burn #1: The thermic effect of eating. Between 10
and 30 percent of the calories you burn each day get burned by
the simple act of digesting your food. Now that’s pretty cool—satisfying
your food cravings actually makes you burn away calories.
But not all foods are created equal: Your body uses more calories
to digest protein (about 25 calories burned for every 100 calories consumed) than it does to digest fats and carbohydrates (10 to 15
calories burned for every 100 calories consumed). That’s why the
Abs Diet concentrates on lean, healthy proteins. Eat more of
them, in a sensible way, and you’ll burn more calories.
Calorie burn #2: Exercise and movement. Another 10 to 15
percent of your calorie burn comes from moving your muscles,
whether you’re pressing weights overhead, running to catch the
bus, or just twiddling your thumbs. Simply turning the pages of
this book will burn calories.
Calorie burn #3: Basal metabolism. This one’s the biggie.
Your basal, or resting, metabolism refers to the calories you’re
burning when you’re doing nothing at all. Sleeping, watching TV,
sitting through yet another mind-numbing presentation on corporate
profit-and-loss statements—you’re burning calories all
the while. In fact, between 60 and 80 percent of your daily calories
are burned up just doing nothing. That’s because your body
is constantly in motion: Your heart is beating, your lungs are
breathing, and your cells are dividing, all the time, even when
you sleep.
Add up the percentages and you’ll see that the majority of your
daily calorie burn comes from physiological functions that you
don’t even think about—the thermic effect of eating and your basal
metabolism.
While exercise is important, you need to realize that
the calories you burn off during exercise aren’t important. Let me
repeat that: Exercise is important, but the calories you burn off
during exercise aren’t important. That’s why the exercise program
we outline in the Abs Diet is designed to alter your basal metabolism,
turning your downtime into fat-burning time.
And it’s why
the food choices we outline for you are designed to maximize the
number of calories you burn simply by eating and digesting. I
want you to forget about the calories you’re burning during those
30 minutes in the gym and concentrate on the calories you’re
burning the other 231⁄2 hours a day.
