 Hey everybody, Dr. O here. So important video here. Is my metabolism broken? Very common question, very common concern. Have you ever wondered why some people can eat whatever they want without gaining weight while other people, maybe you, gain weight just by looking at food? Or have you wondered why men seem to lose weight more easily than women? Or have you blamed your weight gain as an inevitable part of getting older and your metabolism slowing down? It's time to do some myth busting by looking at the most powerful metabolism study that has ever been performed. Let's dive in. I mean, this is really important study. So what does the science say here? Daily energy expenditure through the human life course. This study, you see lots of authors, presents total daily energy expenditure data that's overall metabolic rate from 6,421 research participants in 29 different countries. The reason this is so important is it use the gold standard. It's called doubly labeled water data. This is the best evidence we have about what impacts total daily energy expenditure. They looked at all sorts of different people, different ages, different activity levels. They had a lot of, they had body fat percentage and BMI and that kind of data as well, but tons and tons of data that have been poured over here to answer some of these key metabolic questions. All right. So what were the main observations from this study that made it so shocking? Number one, two people that look the same on the outside can have wildly different metabolic rates. Number two, males and females burn the same number of calories when you account for body composition. I'll come back to that. And number three, aging does not impact your metabolic rate in the way that you think it does. So let's take a closer look. I love these charts as well. So number one, even when controlling for body composition, sex and age, energy expenditure can vary considerably between individuals. So you see that black line running across? That's kind of like the average. But then you got all the dots below it and all the dots above it. And you have some dots that are way below it and some dots that are way above it. That's this variation that we're talking about. So let's put some numbers to it. Let me give you an example. On the left hand side, you see energy expenditure in megajoules per day. A megajoule is 239 calories, just so you know. So let's look at 60 kilograms of fat-free mass. That'd be 133 pounds of fat-free mass. Let's say that these people weigh about 160 pounds. So you got people that weigh about 160 pounds. They average 2400 calories per day. That sounds fair, 160-pound person eating 2400 calories per day because that's how many they burn. That sounds fine by me, but let's look at the exceptions here. But look at the bottom. Some people are only burning about 1200 calories per day and some are burning three times as many, 3,600 calories per day. Then you have the real outliers near the top. Outliers can burn almost 7000 calories per day. So at a single fat-free mass range, a single weight, let's say, you've got one person burning 1200 calories, one person burning 7000, right? So it's easy to see why weight loss would be much easier for some people than for others, but have no fear. I'll explain where these differences come from because it's not the amount of fat-free mass they have. And I'll explain how you can boost your metabolic rate in the rest of this course. So number two, now we're looking at age. Our metabolisms typically remain stable in adulthood from the ages of 20 to 60. You see that our metabolisms go down in the beginning because when you're a baby, it takes a lot of energy to build that brain. But between the ages of 20 and 60, you see that the metabolic rate is actually really stable. Then it starts to decline. This means that at some point, we can blame our age on our metabolism dropping, but not in your 30s and 40s, right? Between the ages of 20 and 60, your metabolic rate should stay relatively stable. I'll teach you what we can blame our weight gain on in just a little bit, but we can't just say that it's our metabolism tanking because we've hit 30 or hit 40 or whatever. All right, so you do see though, at age 60, you start to see age-related drops in absolute energy expenditure. This can be related to a loss of fat-free mass. We'll talk about how to keep that from happening. Lower activity level, we'll find ways to increase our physical activity levels. And then declines in organ level metabolic rates, right? It's at this point, 60, 70, 80 and beyond. It's at this point when your brain and your liver and your kidneys start to burn fewer calories and you can't really control that. But you can fight this drop in metabolic rate by staying physically active. I'll show you the research later. So good thing you're here. Good thing you're taking this course. Number three, now we're looking at males versus females. So males and females have a similar energy expenditure when body composition is accounted for. So they all kind of fall in that same line there whether they're males or females, but look what they have in common, the amount of fat-free mass. This means that the average male has a faster metabolism because he has more lean mass. There isn't some magic difference in weight loss between males and females. At least prior to menopause, right? Hormones can definitely have a big impact here. Males will burn more fat because they have a larger engine. They typically have more fat-free mass. This means that it's especially important that women increase their lean mass by resistance training, strength training and staying physically active and increase their physical activity if fat loss is a goal. Because if your engine is smaller, which means your metabolic rate is slower, then you need to burn more calories on top of that. All right, so what are our key takeaways here? Very, very powerful study. Two people that look the same on the outside can have wildly different metabolic rates. And the reason that's important is that means that if someone the same size as you has a higher metabolic rate than you, I will teach you how to get your metabolic rate to hopefully match theirs. Number two, males and females burn the same number of calories when you account for body composition. So it's very important for everyone, but especially females, to increase the amount of lean mass on their body. And number three, aging does not impact your metabolic rate in the way that you think it does. So what are our action steps? We'll continue on in the course to see that we are in control of our metabolic destiny. We can't, we don't just get to say that I have a slow metabolism, I'm getting older, this and this, those things might even be true sometimes, but we're gonna take control. So in the next lesson, I'm gonna explain why all of this is actually good news because we are in control. All right, I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.