Read through any diet success story and you will see the true secret to that person's success. At some point, the person always integrated exercise into their plan. The same holds true the other way around. How many times have you heard someone say that they work out all the time, but just can't seem to lose those last ten or fifteen pounds?

The truth is, in order to achieve lifelong results, nutrition and fitness need to go hand in hand to optimize your metabolism.

What is Metabolism? Metabolism is the process your body uses to break down the food that you eat, convert it to energy, or store it. Your metabolism is based on several cues that you give your body by the way that you eat and the energy you use in your daily routines.

To achieve lifelong fitness, you need to raise your activity level to start burning more calories, while feeding your body the right amount of food to sustain itself. That means eating enough throughout the day to let your body know that there will be plenty of food around to sustain a higher caloric burn. Once your body acclimates to both of those signals, your metabolism will start to change. You will be burning more calories by increasing your activity level, but you will also increase the amount of calories you burn when you are not working out - while you work, watch television, and even when you're sleeping.

Understanding your metabolism is the reason that low calorie diets don't work. When you feed your metabolism your body burns more calories. A great example of this is on a weight loss network tv show that the people who won't follow their eating plan and kept eating less calories actually gain weight. Your body will burn fat as your main source of energy if you eat 5 small meals during the day balanced with the proper calorie range.

One thing to keep in mind is that the faster your metabolism gets and the more fat you burn the more you need to eat. This concept is one of the hardest for people to understand which is evidence why 60% of Americans are overweight or obese. Without increasing your calories as your metabolism increases you burn away your new muscle tissue for energy which keeps you staying at the same results no matter how hard you workout.

Copyright (c) 2008 Charles Carter