Weight-Loss What causes decreased metabolism? Calories or amount?

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ccmtpleasant

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I have heard that decreasing calories too drastically causes the metabolism to slow down, my question is......is it actually the decrease in calories that causes this or is it the decrease in food quantity?

Obviously broccoli is better overall for a person than pizza, but for an example, if I ate 3 SMALL meals (small piece of pizza) a day totaling 900 calories, would that be better or worse than eating
6 LARGE meals (large portions of broccoli) totaling 500 calories a day?

These numbers and the food are just for example, the point is, does the amount of food play a role in a slowed metabolism or is it strictly the caloric number?
 
It kind of depends - both are factors. However, 900 calories of pizza is probably still higher metabolism than 500 calories of broccoli. It might not be higher than say... 800 calories of broccoli, or even 700...

It's hard to talk about your 'metbolism' in terms of this because it's kind of abstract and vague. Normally your total metablism, i.e. calories burned in a day is made of at least three factors - Basal Metabolic Rate(BMR) - this is basically the amount of calories you burn to power your brain, to keep the basic things running your body etc. Most of the time this is measured as the number of calories you burn when you sleep. Then there's the Thermic Effect of Activity (TEA) - this is what you burn when you go for a walk, vacuum the floor, move around etc. Then there's the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). This is what it takes to digest and process food.

The 'assumed' number for this is that if you eat 100 calories worth of food, it takes about 25 calories to 'digest' the food, so you boost your 'metabolism'. However, more recent studies have shown the values aren't the same for different types of food. Just as an example, 100 calories of raw broccoli might take 30 calories to digest, and 100 calories of cooked broccoli might take 20. (I'm making up numbers because I don't know) and 100 calories of pizza might take 10 calories.

In general, raw, unprocessed foods take the most calories to process and highly processed foods take the least. So eating more unprocessed foods will boost your metabolism more - but I don't know that it would make a difference of 400 calories...

Does that make sense at all?
 
Generally high fat and hard to digest foods, like unprocessed products, wholegrain, high in fiber and most meat products require more energy to digest so they increase your metabolism. Though not much to justify eating them in great quantities obviously :)
 
In terms of Metabolism,it is kind of vague. Basically Metbolism create the three basic problems-
Basal Metabolic Rate
Thermic Effect of Food
Thermic Effect of Activity
All are basically used for process or digest food.Metabolism is a chemical reaction that is used to maintain the humans life. Metabolism is normally divided in two parts. Catabolism (to harvest energy in cellular respiration) and Anabolism (provide energy to construct components of cells).
 
Ok, there is no need to complicate this.

The thing that causes your metabolism to go down is eating too few CALORIES, not the weight, volume or density of the food you consume. The reason the metabolism goes down is not that the body goes "omg all this lightweight food is just ezypezy" it is because it goes "omfg not enough energy to maintain basic organ functions at normal level, turn everything down to survive"

The body couldn't care less whether the calories comes from broccoli of 7-11 pizza slices as far as the "starvation-mode" thing goes.

And just to add to the whole RAW thing, really... no. the amount of energy the body spends digesting raw foods isn't significant in the least, and the body can't use enzymes from veggies, it uses the enzymes it produces to act as a catalyst for the chemical reactions it needs to do. People don't do photosynthesis and hence don't need the enzymes that helps with that, or has something changed since I took my basic biology course? Do the raw-food-due-to-enzymes people even know what an enzyme is? and what its purpose is?
 
I'd have to agree with clever here.... your body needs a certain amount of energy (calories) to function and maintain it's current state (i.e. bone density, muscle mass, brain function, etc.). If it's not given enough calories to do this over a length of time, it will find ways to lower its metabolic rate in order to survive. Survival does not equal optimal function, it means getting by on the minimum that you can until you can obtain more calories again. Survival is not meant to be a long-term state. So, if you don't take in enough calories, your body will start pulling energy and nutrients from its stores... in some ways this can be beneficial (pulling from excess fat stores), but in many ways it is detrimental, like when your body needs to pull from protein stores (muscle), draw from it's calcium stores (bone), and it's glucose stores are depleted (ever had trouble concentrating or felt dizzy when you haven't eaten enough?).

You burn WAY more calories by exercising, plus you get all kinds of positive health benefits from physical activity. In my opinion, instead of spending time trying to figure out how many calories you burn by eating different foods, stop wasting time... just get out and MOVE!
 
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