Dr. Layne Norton

So your BMR doesn't change.

So I said total energy expenditure on average.

But here's the thing.

There's a lot of people who have sleep problems during menopause.

Stress goes up.

You probably don't feel as good, right, as your hormones change.

And so –

one of the big buckets for energy expenditure is actually subconscious or unconscious physical activity, like spontaneous physical activity.

People don't realize this.

So if we think about total energy expenditure, so calories out, right?

Everything you expend in the day, people equate that with metabolism.

Well, metabolism is your BMR.

That's basically the cost of keeping the lights on, right?

Like that's the cost to run your organs when you're at rest, right?

That is usually a pretty big chunk of your total energy expenditure.

That's like 50 to 70% per day for most people.

Then you have TEF, which is the amount of energy required to extract the energy out of food.

That's usually a couple hundred calories per day.

And then you have your physical activity, which people think about purely as exercise, but it's not.

Physical activity can be broken up into two buckets, purposeful and non-purposeful, which exercise obviously falls into purposeful.