An understanding of basal metabolism would give us a better idea of how to reduce body fat.

In order to lose body fat, we need to cut down on our calorie intake, as well as increase our physical activity levels.

Our daily metabolic rate determines the amount of calories we burn in a day. The daily metabolic (calorie) equation is as follows:

Basal metabolic rate refers to the base amount of calories that our bodies use in staying alive. That is, the calories used by the various organs of our bodies in performing their functions.

This daily basal calorie-burn, as well as the calories used in digesting food, tends to remain fairly constant. Therefore, physical activity levels, which account for the remainder of the daily calories used up, would be the only variable factor which can be manipulated to increase our daily calorie burn.

Therefore, the only feasible method of effectively influencing our daily calorie burn is to increase our calorie burn through increased physical activity.

Our basal metabolic rate is determined by a number of factors, namely:

Body Weight

The greater our body weight, the higher our basal metabolism rate.

Gender

Because men tend to have a higher muscle-to-fat ratio, than women, they tend to have a higher basal metabolic rate on average, than women.

Age

Our bodies' metabolic rate tends to slow down further with age, and the muscle-to-fat ratio starts to decline.

Lean Body Composition

The fatter we are the lower our basal metabolic rate will be. As we increase our physical activity and become leaner, our basal metabolism increases.

Genetics

It is believed that our basal metabolic rate could also be influenced by heredity factors.

By looking at the different factors influencing calorie burn, we see that in order to increase calorie burn effectively, we should increase our physical activity levels. Increased physical activity would then lead to us each developing a leaner body, which would then lead to us now having a higher basal metabolic rate.

Developing a leaner body would not always result in us losing body weight, but it will result in a loss of body fat. This is because, depending upon the type of physical activity, we could be developing more muscle, and muscle tissue is denser and heavier than fat tissue. We would however, develop a leaner and more proportionate physique.

Note: To get a clearer understanding of our fat loss we should use a tape measure rather than a bathroom scale to determine the results of our weight loss.

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