This is a short blog post about a man’s basal metabolic rate or BMR for short.
Back in February we wrote a blog post ‘How Important Is Your Metabolic Age‘ and it’s turned out to be one of our most widely read blog posts of all time. Most likely because we referenced Leo Varadkar’s, the then Taoiseach’s metabolic age and alongside his, Claire Byrne’s, the RTE presenter.
The upshot of that blog post was a significant increase in men getting in touch with us, particualry in relation to their visceral fat.
Two things emerged:
- Most of those men were unaware / had not heard of either basal metabolic rate or metabolic age.
- Also, they’d no idea of what visceral fat really meant and the dangers it posed.
Basal Metabolic Rate Or BMR
Your metabolic age is how your basal metabolic rate (BMR), or how many calories your body burns at rest, compares to the average BMR for people of your chronological age in the general population. BMR is just one measurement of a person’s overall health and fitness, and is only one of the guideline measurements we use when preparing our client’s weight loss programme.
Visceral Fat
Visceral fat is the type of fat that lies behind your abdominal wall, in the cavity that also houses your vital organs. If you have too much of this fat, it will crowd around your liver, pancreas, intestines and your heart and lungs. It is the result of a diet over reliant on processed, sugary foods and a lifestyle that includes too much alcohol, too much stress or too little sleep.
How We Measure A Man’s Basal Metabolic Rate
There is no difference in how we go about or calculate a man’s or a woman’s BMR. The process is exactly the same for both sexes, but today the focus in on men so as to draw attention to the importance of the subject and their general wellbeing.
At Motivation we use a specialised Tanita body composition monitor that uses advanced Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis technology.
- Your age and gender (male) is inputted.
- You stand on the Tanita scales and a very low, safe electrical signal is sent from four metal electrodes through your feet to your legs and abdomen (anyone wearing a pacemaker should not stand on the scales). The scales essentially assesses how easy it is for the currents to travel throughout your body.
- The electrical signal passes quickly through water that present in hydrated muscle tissue but meets resistance when it hits fat tissue.
- This resistance, known as impedance, is measured and input into scientifically validated Tanita equations to calculate body composition measurements – your Basal Metabolic Rate is one of those measurements.
When monitored over time, metabolic age is a fantastic way to show the impact of any fitness regime or weight loss programme. Increasing your muscle mass will reduce your metabolic age over time (as it speeds up your basal metabolic rate or BMR). A person with a high BMR burns more calories at rest than a person with a low BMR (yes – even while you’re sitting still or sleeping!).
In a nutshell, for only €25 we will calculate you BMR and carry out a thorough weight loss evaluation.
