The long thought belief that your metabolism declines after your teens, according to LSU Pennington Biomedical Research is not necessarily true. Director of Ingestive Behavior at Pennington, Dr. Corby Martin said their study indicates our metabolism is pretty stable from age 20 to 60.
“We found that our metabolism really closely reflects our actual body size and more specifically our body composition which refers to the amount of muscle mass and body fat that we have,” said Martin.
The study included 66-hundred participants from ages one week to 95 years old in 29 different countries. Martin said for the most part your metabolism stays the same until your 60s.
“So, during that time metabolism is really stable, doesn’t really differ between men and women, and even during pregnancy our metabolism is really entirely accounted for by our body mass,” said Martin.
Martin said infants and children have an advantage because they have a higher metabolism based on their smaller body size, so they’re burning more calories per pound than we are as adults, but through adolescence, their metabolism slowly dwindles…
“At about age 20 their metabolism very much reflected the expected metabolism based on their body size, and it remained that way all the way until about age 60,” said Martin.
As we age adults also tend to have a more sedentary lifestyle due to work demands which also decreases our opportunity to burn calories. Martin said as children we have more free time to be active versus adults.
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