The definition of metabolism is: a series of chemical reactions that take place inside our body to sustain life. I know that shocked me too but I always assumed metabolism just meant the process by which someone is fat or skinny.

So then why is the word metabolism so closely associated with weight loss ?

Well, the bodies ability to sustain life (think back to the definition) boils down to the bodies ability to use 4 bio molecules, protein, fat, carbs and something called, “nucleic acids.” Nucleic acids are things like DNA & RNA.

So in the simplest terms we eat food to obtain these necessary bio molecules for metabolism. But every food we eat isn’t the perfect configuration of what our body needs. So what happens is, a food is broken down during digestion into simple and more scientific sounding particles. I like to think of each piece of food we eat as a bowl of rainbow M&Ms that then get separated by color. So after digestion we take our food (bowl of rainbow M&Ms) and break them down into 4 bowls of individual colors (blue, red, green and yellow)

So you’ve eaten a food that contains protein, fat, carbs & nucleic acids and digestion breaks it down into fatty acids (fat) glucose (carbs) amino acids (protein) & nucleotides. With me so far?

Then we need to use what our body needs. So we take the configuration of colors our body needs. And that takes energy. So the same food we eat is being broken down but also built back up at the same time. It’s a cycle. And guys…what regulates that cycle?! you guessed it…hormones.

And it is still very confusing. So did I help? Eh, not sure:)