Who never blamed their own metabolism to keep from losing weight? “When I was young, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight, but of course my metabolism has changed and now everything makes me fat.” “My neighbor eats a lot and is like a stick, he must have a really fast metabolism.” We’ve all heard or formulated some version of these phrases. But are we right to blame our metabolism for our problems with gaining or losing weight?
Well, generally speaking, it is more than logical to link metabolism with weight loss. It is defined as a set of chemical reactions by which cells consume and generate energy. Considering that in order to lose weight we must expend more energy than we consume, it is obvious that metabolism is involved. So why is it that there are people who gain more weight and others who can eat whatever they want and still not gain weight?
Let’s imagine two people of the same gender, same age, same body fat percentage, same activity level. Neither has any weight-related illnesses, and they eat the same foods, but one stays the same while the other keeps gaining weight. Is your metabolism preventing you from losing weight? The key, as with so many things that differentiate one person from another, is genetics.
Factors Affecting Metabolism for Weight Loss
A person who leads a sedentary lifestyle will most likely lose weight more slowly than someone who is often active. Age also plays a role. We have all seen that as we age, it becomes increasingly difficult to lose weight. Although it is not impossible, of course. The same thing happens with sex, since there are hormonal differences that greatly affect weight gain or loss. And of course, this also plays a role muscle to fat ratio.
Now, as we have seen, there are people who agree with the vast majority of these factors, and even then they do not lose weight equally. For a long time, it was believed that there must be genetic reasons. However, not long ago, the first genes involved began to be discovered.
Proteins That Make You Lose Weight
Of all the genes studied in this regard, one of the most interesting, and perhaps the last one for which results have been published, is the one encoding the protein PGC-1α.
Its role in weight loss was described in August last year by a group of scientists from Kobe University, in Japan. It is known that this protein is an enhancer of the expression of the same genes. All cells have the same genes, but not all of them are used in all cells at the same time. For example, the genes for insulin synthesis are found in all cells, but they are used only in the cells of the pancreas. We do not need them to be used at all, for example, in the cells of the eye. On the other hand, even in the pancreas, genes are turned on or off as insulin is needed or no longer needed. This turning on of genes in the right place and at the right time is called gene expression.
This can happen without outside help, but there are proteins called amplifierswhich enhance it. And that’s exactly what PGC-1α does. In this case, it enhances the expression of genes associated with fat oxidation and thermogenesis. The latter helps increase your basal metabolic rate and therefore burn calories faster.
And it turns out that there are more of them
This role of PGC-1α was already well known to scientists. However, the authors of this study discovered that there are two more proteins: PGC-1b and PGC-1cwhich have the same function but are produced in much greater amount in the muscles during training. What’s the problem? That this doesn’t happen to everyone.
By analyzing human and mouse cells, they found that those with only PGC-1α had a much harder time losing weight with the same exercise than those who also had the other two. It’s true that your metabolism works differently, but because genetic differences.
So the next time we blame our metabolism for not losing weight, maybe we should think again and blame our genes. They really are responsible for the fact that sometimes the weight doesn’t come off as quickly as we would like.
Source: Hiper Textual
