It is often said that weight gain or loss is related to whether a person has a fast or slow metabolism.

For instance, those with a fast metabolism are said to burn off calories quickly, whereas those with a slow metabolism burn them off more slowly.

How true this is may be scientifically debatable. Som scientists believe that metabolism may be more related to how the body’s temperature is regulated. In other words, it is body temperature that determines how quickly we burn off the calories rather than whether it is a fast or slow metabolism.

This process is called thermogenesis.

Interestingly, researchers believe that being able to control the way our body temperature is regulated maybe key to how we lose weight.

For instance, small changes in body temperature are known to have a massive effect on metabolism.

One idea that is currently being pursued is cold thermogenesis. It has been suggested that rather than trying to burn off calories by heating up the body via exercise it could be more effective by cooling the body down.

Cooling (making a person shiver) forces the body to burn off fat cells in order to restore the normal homeostatic state.

The traditional view of losing weight is that we exercise in order to burn off blood-sugar (glucose) along with stored sugar (glycogen) and with fat tissue.