Basal Metabolic Rate is the amount of energy expressed in calories that a person needs to keep the body functioning at rest.
Explaining metabolic age simply: the human body requires a significant amount of energy (i.e. calories) just to function regularly. Each day, your body must breathe, blink, circulate blood, control body temperature, grow new cells, support brain and nerve activity and contract muscles. The amount of energy (in the form of calories) that the body needs to function while resting for 24 hours is known as the basal metabolic rate, or BMR.
This number of calories reflects how much energy your body requires to support vital body functions if, hypothetically, you were resting in bed for an entire day. In fact, the BMR accounts for about 60% to 75% of your total energy burned each day.
It is influenced by several factors: weight, height, age and gender. Heavier and taller individuals have a higher BMR, because the more mass you have, the more fuel you need to sustain larger organs. When you lose weight your BMR decreases and you require fewer calories per day. In contrast, when you gain dense, heavier muscle, your BMR will increase. Further, metabolic rate decreases as you age because muscle mass declines by five to ten percent each decade after the age of 30.
Since body composition (ratios of lean muscle, bone and fat) differ between men and women, research shows that women have a five to ten percent lower BMR than men.
What is metabolic age and how does it differ from chronological age?
Metabolic age is a new term used in the health and fitness industry to describe overall fitness and metabolic activity.
Chronological age is your age in calendar years. Metabolic age is a number that comes from comparing your Basal Metabolic Rate with the Basal Metabolic Rate average of other individuals of the same chronological age.
The metabolic age can give you some information about the overall level of health and wellness.
If your metabolic age is higher than your actual age, it is an indication that you need to improve your metabolic rate.
All the components in our body require various levels of energy to be maintained. Body fat requires much less energy than lean muscle, as lean muscle is much more metabolically active and therefore requires more energy expenditure. If comparing two individuals, with the same weight but different percentage of lean muscle mass and fat, the person with more lean muscle mass will have a higher basal metabolic rate, and therefore, a lower metabolic age in comparison to those with the identical chronological age.
So, to sum it up: increase your exercise to gain more muscle tissue, which in turn will improve your metabolic age.
