As an athlete, you have to prioritize muscle. Your resting metabolic rate is one of the many valuable biomarkers in our assessment toolbox to help you achieve the most success in your training and recovery. Below you'll understand how we measure and why it's important to build an abundance mindset with your nutrition choices regardless of the goal.
RESTING METABOLIC RATE
Your resting metabolic rate is the amount of energy you burn at rest to support your essential body functions (blood circulation, neurological processes, organ functions, and breathing) and is a reflection of the lean muscle mass you possess. The need to retain or grow muscle mass increases as you age, a responsibility many are not aware of.
Look at your body as a furnace. You are constantly producing heat and burning calories to create the energy you need to sustain performance. You do this both at rest and at peak heart rate in varying degrees with different substrates (carbohydrates or fats) depending on the activity at hand. Well-trained individuals have an efficient metabolism to burn more fat at rest while also burning more calories overall due to the amount of lean muscle mass they can retain and grow.
As you age, it is harder to maintain or grow muscle. You need to sustain enough nutrition and work with enough resistance to keep your furnace on.
HOW WE MEASURE
You can measure your RMR by taking a closer look at your breath. Indirect calorimetry measures the heat produced in your body by analyzing the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen at rest over time. We want to check to see how much fat you can burn at rest to promote an efficient lifestyle. The more oxygen you can take in, the more you can burn.
Note: Your metabolism changes by the minute and can be viewed as a dimmer switch in that you're never burning solely fat or carbs. It wavers depending on your conditioning, the activity at hand, and the food you choose to eat among other biological functions in your body (think hormones, stress, or any underlying conditions).
MOTIVNY uses PNOE Analytics to assess and track progress in a quick 10-minute test that can be done before any therapy or personal training session. This is best done first thing in the morning and after a day of full recovery. This test can be measured every three months so you can check in and strategize that your lifestyle changes are giving you the results you want.
Why Resting Metabolic Rate Testing Matters
We want you to be free.
Be free to eat the food that will help you hold on to muscle or grow it in your training. Focusing on nutrient-dense foods supports a high-performance lifestyle and honors the energy needed to digest food properly. Knowing how much you can burn and what macronutrients to balance gives you the freedom to select more food to facilitate the change you want.
A fun fact from a trusted client and coach Michelle Pesce, FTNP a Nutrition Therapy Practitioner "Digestion takes a lot of work, it is a chemical and mechanical process and among the most energy-intensive in the human body." Your digestion (the furnace) takes energy (the food you eat) and relies on consistency to work properly.
Here's a snapshot of my RMR and the recommendations both to gain muscle or weight loss in the healthiest range possible.
The data we pull from your breathing can help us customize your nutrition programming to create realistic targets depending on the goal. Thermodynamics and physiology are only a part of the equation. Nutrition coaching relies on the habits and lifestyle flow of the individual. If you're curious to see a snapshot of your metabolism, click below to start your assessment.
