Forums >Health and Nutrition>What's the point of metabolic age?
Joggaholic
A trainer at my company gym has this fancy body weight scale that measures all sort of stuff like body fat % and what not, and one of the measurements it gives is metabolic age. I tried it and it gave me a really low number. I am not as interested in the result or the accuracy of it as to why this measurement matters? I did some online searches and here is my understanding:
1) As you get older, your metabolism slows down
2) One's metabolic age is just a reference to the average metabolism of a certain age group
So, I have a metabolic age much lower than my chronological age. Why is this a good thing? (maybe it's not, that's just the impression I got from the trainer) What makes burning more calories while doing nothing a health or fitness indicator? I think I'm missing some pieces in trying to understand this.
To me this is just another number to obsess over and feel superior to others. Similar to what Garmin reports as our Cardio Vascular fitness age. I think for most regular runners and other cardio nuts, it says 20 years old. That may not mean we can recover as fast as s 20 year old, or that we can jump as high, or be able to stay up all night and then go back to work next day etc etc.