15 Healthy and Easy Ways to Increase Your Metabolism
What is metabolism? In the simplest terms, Metabolic Rate at which your body burns calories. Very few people have a fast metabolism, and overweight individuals generally have slow metabolisms. However, a faster metabolism will enable you to lose more weight than your friend, even if you both have the same activity level, diet, and weight. The great thing is that I listed 15 ways to increase your metabolism!
1. Eat “Break – Fast” When you go to sleep at night you are essentially fasting all night and your body slows down its metabolism. Its important to kick start your metabolism asap. Studies show that people who eat breakfast daily tend to not overeat later in the day. If I ever find someone who doesnt get great results in boot camp its usually because they skip breakfast and sometimes are waiting 5 or 6 hours until they eat their first meal. Simply stated… “Skip Breakfast…if you want to be Fat”.
2. Eat four to six small meals (or healthy snacks) a day.
Your body burns calories digesting food, some foods like celery have “negative calories” because they take more calories to digest than they contain. Small meals will keep you satiated, stop hunger signals and overeating. Your body won’t go into starvation mode when you eat frequent meals and will burn more calories.
3. Strength Training
Lift weights or take up resistance training 2 to 4 times per week. Your resting metabolic rate will increase for a few hours after strength training. Muscle also uses more calories at rest than fat, replace 10 pounds of fat with 10 pounds of muscle and you could burn an extra 100 calories a day. This may not sound like much but that’s 10 pounds a year that doesn’t end up on your love handles.
4. Drink Water (Especially Cold Water)
Drinking water will increase metabolism. Drinking cold water will make your body burn calories to raise your body temperature. If you drink between 6 and 8 glasses of water a day you could burn another 10 pounds a year.
5. Include Protein In Your Diet
The body burns more calories digesting protein than sugar or carbohydrates. Protein also helps build fuel burning muscle. Ever feel like a meal wasn’t complete without some meat? It’s more than just the taste. Meat or any protein such as beans or dairy make your body send the “I’m stuffed” signal.
6. Vitamins and Minerals
Each cell in your body burns food energy to maintain your bodily processes. The chemical processes that convert food to energy require vitamins and minerals. Keep this chemical process working efficiently by eating nutrient rich fruits and vegetables. It’s not a bad idea to take a daily multivitamin either just in case. Some doctors may say you don’t need to…I say you do because I rarely meet anyone who eats absolutely perfect every single day, however taking excess vitamins is not a good idea either though.
7. Keep Your Body Moving
Regular physical activity should be a part of any healthy lifestyle. Even if you have a weekly exercise program, your body’s metabolism will slow down if you are sitting at a desk all day. Get moving, take the stairs, bike or walk to work, go for a lunchtime walk. Take a break for at least a few minutes each hour and move.
8. Get a lot of Sun
Studies show that being out in the sun can increase your metabolism. Usually people are leaner in warmer environments. Take advantage of the sun when we have it.
9. Reduce Stress
Stress causes the body to release the hormone cortisol, which helps to break down protein into glucose. Your body then turns this excess glucose into fat and stores it in you stomach. Cortisol competes with dehydroepiandrosterone which is required for a healthy metabolism. Cortisol also reduces hormones necessary for muscle production and libido.
10. Drink Green Tea or Oolong Tea
Studies found that men and women who drank green tea with caffeine burned more calories than those who did not. Similar results have been found for oolong tea. The caffeine content is usually less than half of coffee. Green tea contains what is known as EGCG’s which is one of the most potent antioxidants in the world. Besides burning more calories it can do wonders for your health.
11. Spice It Up
Spicy foods increase metabolism. The compound capsaicin is what makes chili peppers spicy. Capsaicin will raise your body temperature requiring your metabolism to increase to cool you off. A nice side effect of eating spicy foods is that they reduce your hunger so you eat less.
12. Eat Nuts!
Some research has suggested small amount of peanuts or almonds or any other high calorie, high fat nut on a regular basis could increase your resting metabolic rate by 10%.
13. Avoid Sleep Deprivation
Chronic sleep deprivation reduces the ability of otherwise healthy individuals to perform metabolic functions such as breaking down carbohydrates or producing hormones. University of Chicago researchers found that reducing from the standard eight down to four hours of sleep each night created effects that resembled the effects of advanced age or the early stages of diabetes. This happened in less than a week.
14. Consume These super foods:
Salmon, Blueberries, Almonds, Whey Protein, Spinach, Turkey, Oatmeal, Cold water, Green Tea, Psyllium Husk
15 Control your Blood Sugar
Eat low glycemic foods and donot eat excess carbohydrates. Most people cannot get away with eating tons of carbs and still have low body fat levels. I suggest you google Low Glycemic carbs and choose carbs under 50. Only eat high glycemic carbs right after you train. Combine proteins and healthy fats with your carbs at each meal…this will slow down big spikes in your insulin levels
David Krainiak
www.mibootcamps.com
www.davidkrainiak.blogspot.com
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