Question: what happens if u have a low metabolism?

Fiona Hatch answered on 17 Mar 2012:

Metabolism looks at how quickly your body uses up the food you eat. There are mainly two factors that can cause you to have a slow or fast metabolism. One is your genes, if you parents had slow metabolisms then you might have a slow metabolism too. The other is the amount of muscle you have; the more muscle you have the faster/higher your metabolism is.

Each person has a basal metabolic rate which is the amount of energy their body would use up in 24 hours if they did no exercise. This is somewhere around 2000kcal for women and 2500 for men and about 1600kcal for children.

Usually if you have a low metabolism your body does not use up energy as quickly as others so rather than using up 2000kcal in a day, your body might use 1600kcal. So most of the time even if you eat a normal amount of food your body will not use up as much. Therefore some of the food will be stored as fat which is why people with slow metabolisms might be slightly more overweight. The best way to increase your metabolism would be to exercise as this would increase the rate your body uses up energy.