Crazy as it seems, some people really think that a “metabolism” is some kind of organ, or a special body part that influences your digestion.

Of course in reality, your metabolism isn’t a body part at all! Instead, it’s a constant wave of change underway within your own body and in everyone else’s too.

Metabolism is a process. It’s the process of transforming food (vitamins and nutrients) into fuel (i.e. energy). Your body uses this manufactured energy to power a huge array of essential functions, which keep us healthy, hale and happy.

In fact, the ability to read these very pages, which you are now gazing upon hungrily, is fuelled and powered by your metabolism!

If you didn’t have a metabolism, you wouldn’t be able to move or even function at all.

In fact, way, way, before you realised that you couldn’t move your finger or lift your foot up, your internal processes would have already stopped working. This is because the basic requirements of life (circulating the blood around your body, transforming life-giving oxygen into carbon dioxide, removing toxic waste products through the kidneys, etc. etc.) – ALL of these processes depend on your metabolism.

Although you may think of your metabolism as a single function, it’s really has a much larger meaning and accounts for the huge array of functions that are taking place inside your body each second you’re alive. Every second of every minute of every day of your life, multiple chemical reactions are taking place in your body due to your functioning metabolism, or your “metabolic function”.

In some ways, your metabolism is a harmonising process. That is, your metabolism is an expert at managing to achieve balance between two critical bodily functions that otherwise would be constantly at odds with each other…

Your body is continually creating more cells to replace dead, dying or dysfunctional cells. For example, if you cut your finger, your body starts the process of creating skin cells to clot the blood and start the healing process instantly. This creation process is a metabolic response, and it’s called anabolism.

On the other hand, there is the exact opposite process taking place in other parts of your body. Instead of building cells and tissues the body is breaking down different kinds of cells for chemical energy so your body can function normally…

For example, when you begin to exercise, your body temperature rises and your heart rate increases. As this happens, your body needs more oxygen, so your breathing rate increases. If your body doesn’t adjust to this bigger need for oxygen, you will collapse. All of this extra energy output needs additional energy from somewhere…

As long as you aren’t overdoing it, your body will begin to convert food and other biological building blocks within your body into energy in a metabolic process called catabolism.

So can you see now, how your metabolism is a constant process that works in two seemingly opposite ways?: anabolism uses energy to create cells, and catabolism breaks down cells to create energy.

Your metabolism is a harmoniser. It brings together these two seemingly opposite functions, and does it in an optimal way that enables your body to create more cells as they are needed, and then break them down, again as they’re needed.

Reflecting on my Chinese martial arts roots, in Oriental terms, this is a great description of ErYi or the two opposites, characterized by the popular two fishes symbol of TaiChi Quan: 

The constant ebb and flow between two extremes describes harmony as their natures seek to balance each other out.

So there we have it, a bit of exercise is really important to achieving your objective of having a svelte body shape and improving your function.

Think about it, if you don’t move, you don’t need muscle because it burns a lot of calories. Muscle is what we use to move the joints about. It’s no good for your body to be wasting energy, if you aren’t moving and able to collect or catch food to eat, like your ancestors did. This is a survival issue for your dna! 

If you want to get rid of fat, start moving! Don’t overdo it, build up slowly, I’ll show you how.

Until next time, 

Jason Dean