People that try to lose weight and fail or only lose an insignificant amount are often heard saying that they can't lose weight because 'it's my metabolism'. To some people this may come across as being some sort of excuse to justify not working hard enough to try and lose weight.

However there is a certain amount of truth in that your metabolism will play a vital role in deciding whether or not you will lose weight or how much weight you will lose. Most people have some vague idea that the metabolism is some sort of bodily machine that spins at a particular rate. If it spins fast you lose weight and if it spins slowly you don't. The metabolism is not an organ of any sorts or a machine. The metabolism is a chemical reaction to your diet and levels of activity.

It sounds a simple process that if you eat less and exercise more than weight loss will be achievable, but it is a little more complicated than this. For starters not everyone's metabolism will work in the same way. Some people have very slow metabolisms and this makes it difficult for them to lose weight and very easy to gain weight. Some people have metabolisms that work almost perfectly where they have no problem losing weight. Others have very fast metabolisms which burn calories at a very high level. While this type of metabolism seems ideal, it is far from being so. Very fast metabolisms have a real problem gaining weight and the people that possess them are often underweight and find it extremely difficult to put on any muscle.

Regardless of what type of metabolism you think you might have, one thing you can be sure of is that it will naturally slow down as you get older. This is not a desirable situation especially if you have a slow metabolism.

When a group of people try to lose weight through dieting, the results will vary amongst them even if they follow the same program. What many people may not realise is that this should be a normal expectation. Results will depend on hormonal activities, chemical balances, your basic body shape, and the speed of your metabolism. As we can all be different in our make up to varying degrees, is it any wonder that a particular diet may work wonders for one person and be completely useless for another.

The one thing you must keep in mind is that your metabolism has its own agenda. It doesn’t care what you look like or what you want. All it cares about is your well being. There are many weight loss programs that advise cutting back heavily on calories. If you have a naturally slow metabolism, then this is weight loss suicide. Your metabolism needs a regular supply of calories. If it gets these then it will happily keep burning them. If it doesn’t get these it will go and store them instead. We all know that stored calories equate to fat.

The worst and most common reason for starvation mode is missing breakfast. Everyone knows the saying that 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' yet this is often ignored. Just think about it for a minute: your body has not had any calories since before you went to sleep the night before. So you wake up having had any calories for at least 10 hours. You miss breakfast and don’t eat until lunch.

This means your body may have gone anything from 12-18 hours without any calories. Now what do you think your metabolism is going to make out of all this? Its not getting any food so it's first thought is going to be 'no food? I must be starving'. It will then slow down and try to hang onto every calorie it can. When you do eat lunch don’t think it will speed up. It will think 'hmm I'd better save these calories for when I may really need them'. It will store these as well, and then you wonder why you can't lose weight.

The trick is to eat 4-6 meals a day instead of 2-3, and never ever miss breakfast. The problem with eating only 2-3 meals a day is not just starvation mode, you have to remember your body can only use a certain amount of calories at any given time. If you exceed this amount, whatever isn’t lost in waste, will be stored as fat. So you are sabotaging your efforts twice.

By eating 4-6 small meals a day you are providing your body with calories on a regular basis, which lets your metabolism know its not starving. If it knows this it will carry on burning calories because it knows it's only a matter of time before it gets some more. Make sure the meals are small and you stop eating before you feel full. This avoids any storage of calories as well. Its ok saying 'it's my metabolism' but don't give up because of it, at the end of the day it is only one factor of many when it comes to losing weight.

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