I know I've mentioned this in other previous blogs, but I just want to make sure that the facts get set straight with this myth.

Metabolism gets a bad rap. I'm telling you now, if you want to lose weight and maintain your weight for life, you better make friends with your metabolism.

Just to let you know, your resting metabolic rate drops by 10 percent each decade of life. Let’s say your RMR is 1,500 calories in your 20s. That would mean in your 30s, your RMR will be 1,350 calories; in your 40s, it would be 1,215 calories. By the time you are in your 50s, your RMR will be just 1,093 calories. That 400-calorie difference adds up.

Why does this happen? We don't change our eating habits as we age. We continue to eat like we did in our 20s, even though our RMR, and most likely our activity level, have drastically dropped. This is why so many of us tend to see the scale trend upward as we age.

This doesn't have to be the case. You can actually slow the drop of your metabolism by exercising consistently throughout your life. Consistent exercise preserves lean body mass and helps to slow the decrease of your metabolism over the years.

You also have to keep your NEAT up. Research shows, as we age we become more and more sedentary. This of course is due to our more technologically based society offering many more office jobs. NEAT will not only increase your metabolism overall, it'll also help preserve the burning capacity of your RMR.

Activities of daily living and muscle activity like fidgeting, muscle tone and maintenance of posture accounts from 15 percent of daily energy expenditure in very sedentary people to 50 percent or more in very active people. There are people who are “low NEAT-o-types,” rather than having a slow metabolism. These are the people who gain weight easily. On the other side, there are people who are “high NEAT-o-types” and find it difficult to lose weight. It's not necessarily because they have a fast metabolism.

So if you happen to gain weight easily, it's not that you necessarily have a slow metabolism; it might be because your metabolism is naturally slowing down and you're doing nothing as you age to increase your overall energy expenditure. It doesn't matter what your RMR is at each decade of life when it comes to weight loss as long as you keep up your energy expenditure for your whole life!