Some people can eat anything and not gain a pound. Metabolism affects the calories you burn each day
It’s a common dieter’s lament: “Ugh, my metabolism is so slow, I’m never going to lose any weight.”
When people talk about a fast or slow metabolism, what they’re really getting at is how many calories their body burns as they go about their day. The idea is that someone with a slow metabolism just won’t use up the same amount of energy to do the same task as does someone with a fast metabolism.
But does the speed of metabolism really vary all that much from person to person? I’m a nutrition scholar who focuses on the biological, environmental and socioeconomic factors that influence body composition. This question is trickier than it might first seem — and whatever the current speed of your metabolism, there are things that will nudge it into lower or higher gears.
Metabolism is a biological term that refers to all the chemical reactions needed to maintain life in an organism. Your metabolism accomplishes three main jobs: converting food into energy; breaking down food into its building blocks for protein, lipid, nucleic acid and some carbohydrate; and eliminating nitrogen wastes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/how-your-metabolism-works-on-calories/2020/12/31/30472214-4ae3-11eb-839a-cf4ba7b7c48c_story.html
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My hunch has always been that people with supposedly lie metabolisms actually aren't absorbing as much into their bodies in the first place.
A slice of pizza might contain a particular number of calories, but perhaps some people absorb 99% of those calories while others only absorb 75%.
Surely someone has tested this, running the fun experiment of collecting samples of excrement and running them through a calorimeter....
