If you have a slow metabolism, trying to lose belly fat can be disheartening to say the least. Good news: it's still achievable, and experts recommend a few ways to make it happen. But there's also a reason why losing weight, including belly fat, is so challenging when you have a slow metabolism.
To explain that, let's first define what your metabolism actually is. When we say "metabolism," we're actually referring to metabolic rate, which is the way your body turns what you eat and drink into usable energy, and how it stores that energy so you can use it later on. There are myriad factors that determine what "kind" of metabolic rate you have (fast, slow, etc.), and the most important ones are also the ones you have no control over: age and your genetics.
However, your metabolic rate is also closely tied to your body composition and muscle mass, said Elizabeth Lowden, MD, bariatric endocrinologist at the Northwestern Medicine Metabolic Health and Surgical Weight Loss Center at Delnor Hospital. Specifically, you can boost your metabolism by increasing your muscle mass and lowering your body fat.
So it's a double challenge if you have a slow metabolism and you want to lose body fat. Your slow metabolism makes it difficult to lose the fat, but the fat makes it difficult to speed up your metabolism. It's a frustrating conundrum, said Holly Lofton, MD, director of the Medical Weight Management Program at NYU Langone Health. "We have to break that cycle somewhere," she told POPSUGAR. Ahead, Dr. Lowden and Dr. Lofton discussed ways to do just that.
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