If you’re trying to lose weight and get more fit, metabolic testing offers you the ability to maximize your weight loss and succeed on your journey to greater fitness.
First of all, what is metabolism? Metabolism involves the chemical reactions of your body as it takes in oxygen and converts your energy stores to keep the body functioning and moving.
There’s a lot of chemical reactions going on, but as it relates to your metabolism, what we’re going to be specifically looking at with metabolic testing is your body’s ability to take in oxygen. That is, of course, a requisite to keeping one of these bodies alive. As long as we’re breathing, things are going pretty well.
Metabolism Utilizes the Energy Stores in Our Bodies
We take in oxygen and combine it with the energy storage in our bodies. Very fundamentally, that means sugars or carbohydrates, fats and protein. We can burn any one of those three energy stores, but the most abundant store that we have is fat, especially at my age.
As you age, things tend to slow down a little bit. As you slow down, you may create more and more energy stores. Your body might try and just live off of carbohydrates and sugars, which is not a good thing. It doesn’t feel very good.
When you can burn fat efficiently, both while exercising and at rest, then A, you’re healthier. And B, your metabolism will operate a lot more efficiently because there’s a lot of fat and the body likes to burn fat.
Metabolic Testing Helps You Convert to Burning Fat
One of the first things to look at in helping you convert from burning carbohydrates to burning fat is metabolic testing. We offer this testing at Rebound Physical Therapy.
We do this test in two ways. First, we do a resting metabolic test, and that just looks at how much energy your body burns while it’s at rest and which stores are you using.
We can tell this through some gas exchange testing, looking at the oxygen and carbon dioxide that you bring in and burn off. There’s a ratio there that we look at.
Then we do the same thing with exercise. We can see how efficient you are at burning those energy stores because if you can turn the body on and activate that metabolism with exercise, you’ll burn more fat at rest, too.
That’s the basic breakdown of what we look at with metabolic testing—we look at your body’s ability to store energy or the types of fuel that you have stored in your body and how efficient you are at utilizing them.
Establishing a Baseline for Your Metabolic Testing
We will establish your baseline with our metabolic testing, whether at rest or with exercise, and preferably both. But even if you can’t complete the exercise test at the beginning, we can still establish your baseline while resting.
We start people at a lower level on cardiovascular testing. We can start with someone walking on a treadmill. We don’t have to have someone running on a treadmill like you do with a stress test. It’s not the same thing.
Once we have the results of your metabolic testing, we can then customize an exercise and nutrition program with and for you so that you can maximize your body’s ability to burn fat, both at rest and with exercise. We want to tailor that exercise program around where you’re starting out and how efficient you are at burning those energy stores.
The goal is to move people out of this sugar-carbohydrate-burning zone into a fat-burning zone. That’s because for most people, their most abundant source of energy store is fat, and the body likes to burn fat. It just needs some help sometimes.
Contact Us for Metabolic Testing and Help Starting a Healthier Lifestyle!
Come in and find out about our metabolic testing. We’re going to figure out how well you burn your energy stores and show you how you can burn fat better. That will help you live a healthier, longer life.
So give us a call at Rebound: (785) 271-5533. We’d love to help you with your metabolic testing needs.
