End Fatigue

Metabolism Tune-Up

by Rob Morano

Optimize your energy naturally

As a pack-a-day smoker who got little sleep or exercise and almost no relief from the roller coaster of self-employment, I was a high-stress, low-energy junkie. Only large and frequent defibrillations of caffeine and sugar gave me the jolt I needed to meet copy deadlines. And after a few years, even they weren’t enough.

It seemed like life – and possibly death – had finally caught up with me. In my 20s, I could eat and drink whatever I wanted, stay out late and not pay the price. But now I could barely get out of bed in the morning. I was a slug.

My work suffered. Personal relationships became strained. And my health deteriorated to the point where I endured back-to-back viral infections last December. That’s when I knew I had to do something. I was 20 pounds overweight, I felt terrible, and my energy and outlook on life were at an all-time low. I had to get out of that vicious cycle.

So how did I begin losing pounds and gaining energy, looking and feeling better than ever before? How did I safely, naturally and inexpensively get back on the road to wellness? By maximizing my metabolism. With healthier habits, regular exercise and better nutrition, I gave my body’s puttering, sputtering engine a tune-up and began rebuilding it into a high-performance, calorie-crunching power plant.

Get Your Motor Running

I started by visiting local libraries and checking out more than a dozen books on getting fit. Soon I gravitated toward the subject of metabolism—a catchall term for the body’s manifold processes of converting oxygen and food into energy. Metabolism is what enables your cells, tissues and organs to perform the digestion, respiration, circulation and other functions that keep you alive. And how you live—whether you smoke or exercise, what you eat and drink, and how you handle stress—affects your metabolism.

That’s right: For better or worse, you can alter your metabolism. Less than a third of your metabolic makeup is accounted for by genetic factors, says Eric T. Poehlman, PhD, research chair in nutrition and metabolism at the University of Montreal. “The genetic contribution is probably on the order of 20 to 30 percent,” he says. Your age, hormone levels, body fat and muscle ratios, and how you eat account for the rest.

Metabolism is measured in calories. You burn calories constantly, whether sleeping, digesting food, watching TV, or running a marathon. The more active you are, the more calories you burn. But no matter how active you are, between 60 and 70 percent of your calories are consumed daily while you are at rest, says Walter C. Willett, MD, chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and author of Eat, Drink and Be Healthy.

Check Under the Hood

Increasing your resting or basal metabolic rate (BMR), Willett says, is critical to lowering your weight and raising your energy levels (see “Do the Math,” p. 42, to calculate your BMR). “The actual calories you need will depend heavily on how active you are,” he adds.

Each of us has unique genes and lifestyles, so two men or two women of identical weight and activity levels will have different BMRs and total calorie consumption. “There are many reasons why you and I respond differently to changes in eating or exercise patterns,” says Poehlman. One way we differ is body temperature. The higher your temperature, the faster your metabolism. So let’s see how hot your engine is running. If it’s on the upper end of the acceptable range, you’ll burn more calories.

Take your temperature as soon as you wake up in the morning. Place your thermometer by your bed the night before, and try to move as little as possible before and while you take your temperature. If you are a woman of child-bearing age, you should take your temperature on the second, third or fourth day of menstruation to get an accurate reading. If your basal body temperature is outside the range of 97.6 and 98.2 degrees Fahrenheit, see your health care practitioner.

Head Out on the Highway

You might want to see your health care practitioner anyway, because next you’re going to take the most important step in raising your BMR, thereby lowering your weight and increasing your energy: You’re going to exercise. “The key is exercise,” Willett says. “There is no shortcut.” When you work out, you not only use more energy, you produce more. And the only way to boost your long-term vitality is to produce rather than consume energy—which happens when you rely on short-term caffeine and sugar fixes.

Poehlman and Willett say there are two basic types of exercise you’ll need to do: aerobic—such as walking, jogging or swimming—and resistance—training with weights. The former will improve your energy by increasing oxygen flow throughout your body, and the latter will add fat-burning muscle. If you haven’t exercised in a while, start with a week or two of brisk walking—I started off using a treadmill at a fitness center—then move on to a combination of jogging or swimming and strength training.

Don’t be a dumbbell: You won’t turn into The Incredible Hulk or Hulkette just by hitting the weights. In fact, you’ll probably start slimming down. And while your bathroom scale may say you haven’t lost much weight, you’ll see and feel a big difference, especially in how much better you fit into your clothes. Try to work up to a solid half hour or more of aerobic exercise six days a week plus three weekly strength-training sessions. After my first month of exercise in years, I’m up to four days of light jogging and two days of lifting weights.

Schedule your exercise as early in the morning as possible. This will establish an upbeat rhythm for the day, and it will help to make sure you do it without getting distracted by work or life events, writes Robert K. Cooper, PhD, in High Energy Living. After lunch and dinner, go for a short walk or climb a few flights of stairs. Keep moving throughout the day, both to burn calories and relieve tension. When at rest, maintain good posture to avoid stressing muscles or causing pain and tension, and to keep your circulation functioning optimally.

Fuel Up with Premium

Be sure you give your engine the fuel it needs—what, when and how much it needs.

1. Eat! You absolutely must begin the day with breakfast and eat sufficiently throughout the day to keep your metabolism from slowing down. Before I started exercising, coffee and cigarettes were all I could stomach. I found that as soon as I started each day off with exercise, I naturally wanted to eat something substantial for breakfast. When you don’t eat, your body goes into a calorie-conserving starvation mode. Not only will you lose energy, but when you do resume eating, your body will be more apt to turn those new calories into fat to prepare for the next self-induced famine.

2. Eat slowly. Start each meal with a few bites of protein, which can stimulate production of brain chemicals that boost alertness. This can help offset the calming effect of carbohydrates. And eat slowly to give your stomach time to tell your brain that you’re full so you don’t overeat.

3. Eat often. We should all nibble or graze constantly. That way, we wouldn’t overload our digestive systems, which makes us drowsy and turns more of what we eat into fat. Eating small amounts frequently keeps your system working at a moderate pace all day.


If you can’t eat six similarly sized meals a day, cut back a little on what you eat at lunch and dinner, and add a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack to keep your energy stable and your digestion active throughout the day. Eating small meals frequently has kept me out of my usual afternoon energy rut, making the afternoon one of my most productive times of the day.

4. Eat the right stuff. You’ve heard it all before: complex carbs, lean proteins, unsaturated fats. Lots of fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. A multivitamin and mineral supplement.

Look Out for Potholes

Eating right also means avoiding the wrong stuff, particularly sugar—which indirectly increases your appetite and rate of fat production—and caffeine, which stresses your adrenal glands and can depress your immune system. Sugar and caffeine also set you up for a crash after the short-term energy boost. Steer clear of similar energy shortcuts by avoiding caffeine-containing herbal supplements such as gotu kola and products containing the stimulant herb ephedra—also known as ma huang—which often is paired with caffeine in weight-loss and bodybuilding formulas.

Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, and author of From Fatigued to Fantastic, suggests replacing sugar with natural, low-calorie sweeteners such as products made with the stevia herb or the lo han fruit. “For the chocoholics, there are all kinds of natural, sugar-free chocolates out there,” he says. “Sugar is basically devastating to the body.” In addition to packing on the pounds, sugar can cause yeast overgrowth, hypoglycemia and immune suppression. To liven up your taste buds, try hot, spicy meals—especially those containing chiles, tamales or hot mustard—that raise your digestive metabolism. Red pepper, garlic and ginger also help you digest food faster.

Between meals, drink plenty of ice water. Not only will your body burn calories to warm the water—about 200 calories per gallon—the water will make you feel fuller. Water frees up your liver to spend more time metabolizing stored fat into energy. “We are a society that is dehydrated,” Teitelbaum says. Your body needs lots of fresh, clean water anyway, so keep it as cold as you can.

Give It a Rest

Now that you’ve come this far, make your hard work pay off by getting a good night’s sleep. Nothing is better for lowering stress—one of the body’s leading energy thieves. Try to keep your eight-hour cycle consistent, and don’t sleep in on weekends, which can throw off your internal clock. When you are awake, get as much sunshine and bright light as you can to remind your brain to stay active and alert.

Other great ways to fight stress include being around optimistic people, laughing, taking regular breaks and occasionally doing nothing at all. Pace yourself, and vary your routine. And try something new, such as yoga or tai chi, which can help you relax and feel energized through meditation and better breathing.

Breath control—don’t I know something about that! I started my fitness quest by quitting smoking. Having flirted half-heartedly with nicotine patches and gum in the past, this time I went cold turkey. But, thanks largely to my newfound exercise and nutrition habits, I’m confident I’m out of the danger zone. And I’m on the road to better health. It’s a little scary taking a new path, but for me there’s no turning back.

Rob Morano is a features writer whose work has appeared in Better Nutrition and Virginia Business magazines.

Totally Tired

Almost everyone could use a little more pep in their step. But if you have a profound and persistent lack of energy, you may be suffering from a serious medical condition such as anemia, depression, chronic fatigue syndrome or hypothyroidism. See your health care practitioner to determine the source of your fatigue and to prescribe appropriate treatment.

• Chronic fatigue syndrome is a disabling exhaustion lasting more than six months. Symptoms may include sleep problems, swollen lymph nodes, mild fever, muscle and joint pain, short-term memory loss and decreased ability to concentrate. Chronic fatigue syndrome may be caused by viral infections, food allergies and adrenal gland dysfunction.

• Hypothyroidism is an insufficiency in the level of hormones produced by the thyroid, a small gland in the front of the neck. Symptoms may include weight gain; sensitivity to cold; fatigue, sleepiness and slurred speech; mental slowness, depression and paranoia; angina, slow pulse and high blood pressure; constipation; heavy menstruation and skin and hair problems. Hypothyroidism can lead to anemia, diabetes and other serious diseases.

Do the Math

To get a rough estimate of your basal metabolic rate (BMR):

• Divide your weight in pounds by 2.2. That’s the daily total of how many calories you burn every hour just sitting around doing nothing.

• Multiply the result by 24 to get your daily total. (Because women have slightly slower metabolisms than men do, they should then multiply the daily total by 0.9.) That’s your BMR.

• Because 60 to 70 percent of your calories are consumed at rest, multiply your BMR by 1.43 and then by 1.67 to find the range of total calories you should be consuming each day. You’ll probably be closer to the low end of the range if you work in an office and expend most of your active energy shuttling between your couch, car and cubicle.