Sticking with the Machine analogy, your body has many different throttle levels at which it operates. Known as metabolism, these levels are the rates at which your body’s physical and chemical processes occur and understanding these processes and when they are more or less active makes it easier to provide your body with nutrition in an efficient manner.

Metabolism encompasses many different functions of your body. It takes your food and converts it into stored energy through building processes known as anabolism. It takes that stored energy and releases it using tear-down processes known as catabolism. It is basically how your body manages its energy to keep itself in a stable condition.

If someone has a generally fast metabolism, their body operates at a faster rate, therefore burning through energy much quicker than “normal”. The body also responds to stimuli that requires more energy by speeding up metabolism, whether that be training or even studying for a test. Any food you eat is unlikely to be stored for later, and will be used as fuel soon after consumption.

While you sleep, your metabolism slows down and your body diverts its resources towards healing and repairing itself, which is essential to keeping your body in good check. Without proper sleep, you become weak and slow because your components are not in right order. And if you are using bad parts, they may break. What I mean is, you will become prone to injury, sickness, and lose coordination between your mind and body. Sleep is equally as important as nutrition, and there is no replacement for it.

If you eat a massive meal and promptly fall asleep, that food is not going to be digested quickly and used by your body, and may be stored into energy reserves. That fat steak you had for dinner doesn’t look so good after it’s been stuck, slowly rotting inside of you because your metabolism dropped for the night. Better to eat the steak earlier in the afternoon and give your body something easily digestible right before bed.

After you wake, your metabolism will spike because your body is beginning its start-up sequences which call for more energy consumption. Low on immediate fuel after a long sleep, it’s absolutely imperative that you feed your body all the proper nutrition it needs to get its systems up and running. My Grandma has been telling me to eat a good breakfast for years…