Knowing your metabolism can kick-start weight-loss plan
If knowledge is power, perhaps Paula Franetti can empower you to shed those extra pounds you've put on in the last few years, and to keep them off for the rest of your life.
Ms. Franetti, who has a master's degree in exercise physiology from the University of Pittsburgh, is the proprietor of MetaFitness, at 977 Perry Highway, Ross.
Ms. Franetti uses two relatively new diagnostic tools to determine how many calories you burn in the course of a normal day, and how you burn them. Then she and Terri Spirk, a dietitian, design diet and activity plans to fit your personal metabolic rate, your daily routine, and your likes and dislikes.
The first device, which looks like a breathalyzer test administered horizontally, can determine your resting metabolic rate by measuring how much oxygen you consume. (It's called the Reevue, for resting energy expenditure view.)
We burn calories every minute of every day, even when we're sleeping. (If we didn't, we'd be dead.) Typically, 70 percent of all the calories we burn are the calories we need just to keep our body functioning.
The number of calories we need each day to sustain life is our basal metabolic rate. (The resting metabolic rate the Reevue can measure is just a bit higher.) It's different for each one of us, and it diminishes with age. A 1997 study at the University of Colorado indicated post-menopausal women have a BMR 10 percent lower than that of the pre-menopausal women studied. If you're in your 40s and 50s, and your diet and exercise patterns are the same as they were in your 20s and 30s, that alone may explain why you've put on a few more pounds.
We burn more calories when we're active than when we're lying in bed. Ms. Franetti measures this with a small device with five sensors that you strap on your arm and leave on for a week. By measuring the amount of heat your body expends, the Sensewear can determine how many calories you burn during the week, and when you burn them.
Understanding and manipulating your metabolic rate is the key to weight loss, fitness, and retarding the aging process, Ms. Franetti said.
Bigger people typically have higher BMRs than smaller people, because it takes more energy to lug the heavier weight around.
Active people have higher basal metabolic rates. The University of Colorado study cited above indicated the decline in BMR was much greater for sedentary women than for women who exercised regularly.
But often the biggest difference is between those people who have proportionally more muscle, and those who have less. It takes energy to sustain muscle mass, while fat just lies there.
This is why exercise programs that include weight lifting and other forms of resistance training tend to be more successful in inducing weight loss than cardiovascular exercise alone, even though you can burn many more calories in an hour on the treadmill or the exercise bike than you can in an hour lifting weights.
If those of us who are not athletes get to the gym three or four times a week, we're doing well. Our metabolic rate spikes while we are exercising, but once we get off the treadmill or the bike, it pretty quickly drops back to normal. Building additional muscle mass will burn additional calories 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you're planning to go on a diet, it's very important not to reduce your calorie consumption below your BMR, Ms. Franetti said.
"Your body will think you're starving, and it will lower your metabolic rate as a defense mechanism," she said.
This is why people who go on low-calorie diets often see dramatic results in the first week or two, but then their weight creeps back up.
The key to long-term weight loss is to consume more calories than are required to sustain your BMR, but fewer calories than you burn in a typical day.
Armed with the results of her tests and an interview, Ms. Franetti prepares for her clients a 13-page Metabolic Efficiency Profile that outlines nearly precisely that range, and then proposes a customized plan to increase the rate at which her clients burn calories.
Typically, the changes she proposes in diet and exercise are modest, and are geared to her clients' likes and dislikes. Small, incremental changes are easier to make and easier to stick to, she said, and, over time, can produce dramatic results.
"It's kind of fun to figure out for people that it is easy to do this," she said.
The results of the Metabolic Efficiency Profile are sometimes startling, Ms. Franetti said.
"I had a client who walked and worked out to exercise tapes for exercise," she said. "She liked walking, but didn't like the exercise tapes.
"Our analysis indicated she was burning more calories on her walks and doing housework than she was when she was working out to the exercise tapes."
When she learned that, the client dumped the tapes and went for longer walks. She was happier, and began making more rapid progress toward her fitness goals, Ms. Franetti said.
"Paula gives you the tools to let you know what your body is doing," said another client, Jill Cueni-Cohen, 41, of Allison Park. "Your excuses are finished."
Ms. Cueni-Cohen said she also appreciates the coaching she receives from Ms. Franetti.
"Dieting can be lonely, and it's great to have Paula encouraging me, showing me I can do it," she said.
Ms. Franetti usually charges $299 for drawing up a Metabolic Efficiency Profile and a customized diet and exercise plan, but is running a special through February for $199. Her telephone number is: 412-247-4957.