Increase Slow Metabolism With These Metabolism Boosting Tips
If you’ve been struggling to lose weight for a significant amount of time and you’re beginning to wonder how to increase your metabolism with the aid of some sort of metabolism booster, you’re not alone.
- What is metabolism?
- What is basal metabolic rate? (BMR)
- How metabolism relates to weight loss
- What does it mean to have a slow metabolism?
- How to boost metabolism
- Are there any metabolism boosting foods?
- Are there any metabolism boosting supplements?
What is metabolism?
Metabolism is a word which is mentioned a lot by personal trainers and dieticians, but what exactly is it?
Every living being has a metabolism. It is the word which describes the set of chemical reactions in living organisms which convert food into energy. To summarise in a basic way, your metabolism is the process by which your body combines the calories in your food and drink with oxygen to release the energy it needs throughout the day for all its vital functions. These functions include breathing, repairing cells, regulating hormone levels, and circulating blood throughout the body.
Everyone’s metabolism is different, depending on a number of factors, but for dieters, it’s important to know that the faster your metabolism ‘runs’, the faster your body burns fat and calories, and the less you store on your body as excess fat.
What is basal metabolic rate? (BMR)
Your basal metabolic rate is the number of calories your body uses to maintain all of its basic functions at rest.
There are several factors that may affect your basal metabolic rate, including:
- Body size and composition: People with more muscle mass or fat naturally burn more calories at rest.
- Gender: Because men naturally have less body fat and more muscle than women, they tend to burn more calories at rest.
- Age: As people age, they lose muscle and gain fat. As a result, their basal metabolic rate slows down.
- It’s difficult to influence your basal metabolic rate. However, there are two factors that do play a major role in the number of calories your body burns each day which you can influence:
- Food Processing: Your body expends a lot of energy – up to 800 calories per day – digesting, absorbing, and storing the food you consume. This process holds fairly steady over time but certain food groups, such as protein, require more energy for digestion. Changing the type of food you eat can speed up your metabolism.
- Physical Activity: Exercise is one sure-fire way to give your metabolism a boost, and the more you do, the more calories your body will burn, not only during the exercise itself, but afterwards too. Because you have control over how much physical activity you engage in, you can directly affect the number of calories you burn each day.
Once you know your basal metabolic rate, you’ll know just how many calories your body is using each day to keep you alive – even if you do nothing but rest all day. This BMR will increase if you increase your level of exercise, the amount of muscle you carry or even the amount of fat you carry.
This explains why people lose more weight more quickly when they’re carrying a lot of excess weight, compared to when they’ve already lost the majority of the excess fat they’ve been carrying.
How metabolism relates to weight loss
Although a ‘slow metabolism’ is often cited as a cause of weight issues, it’s actually a relatively rare that a sluggish metabolism can’t be remedied through simple changes to your diet and lifestyle. Certain medical conditions such as hypothyroidism or Cushing’s syndrome can cause a slow metabolism to be more of a problem, but these aren’t at all common.
Quite often, people reside themselves to the ‘fact’ that they’re overweight simply because they have a slow metabolism. In reality, most of us are consuming a few more calories than we realize and not burning off enough in our day to day activities. Over time the effects of this imbalance slowly build up until we find ourselves with excess weight, but there are several practical steps we can take that will really help to bring your metabolism back up to a reasonable speed and resolve the issue.
What does it mean to have a slow metabolism?
Having a slow metabolism can have a real impact on your ability to lose weight easily. This is due to the fact that your body won’t be burning off as many calories as it should be to maintain a healthy weight. This becomes especially problematic if you eat a diet high in calories and fat. If you think you may be suffering from a slow metabolism, you might want to find out how to increase metabolism as soon as possible. Although regular dieting can cause metabolic damage (a slow metabolism), it’s completely possible ‘reset’ your metabolism to normal levels by following the steps below.
How to boost metabolism
When searching for methods on how to increase metabolism, it can be easy to skip straight to the metabolism booster section of your local drug store, but the truth is, you should really start by seeing what your body can do for itself first.
We’ve already learned that two particular things can have a major impact on the speed at which your metabolism runs – the type of food you eat, and the type of exercise you do. So which are the very best types of food and exercise for boosting metabolism? Well, it’s simple really.
Protein is where it’s at!
Protein should be high on your agenda if you’re looking to increase the speed of your metabolism. Why? Because out of all 3 major food groups, it causes the largest rise in your metabolic rate – as much as 15 – 30% after eating it.
All food causes some rise in your metabolism after consumption, but carbs only raise it by 5 – 10%, and fats as little as 0 – 3%! Armed with this information, it doesn’t take a scientist to see which type of food’s going to cause more weight gain – and which one’s going to cause weight loss.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
All exercise is good, but for the fastest results, you need something a little more intense – and it doesn’t get much more intense than HIIT.
Be sure to get more High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into your workout routines. It’s been proven by science that HIIT burns twice the amount of calories per minute than a standard cardio workout. Yes, it’s intense, it’s hot and it’s very sweaty – but it gets the job done quickly, effectively and brings real results very fast.
A couple of extra tips:
In addition to the above, you may want to consider the following:
Drink more water
Water is essential for your body to function at its best and one reason why is because it supports the metabolism. Hydrogen from water is used in numerous metabolic processes which allow you to break down fat into usable energy. So, being even slightly dehydrated can prevent you from losing weight (even if you’re doing everything else right).
In fact, many research studies have shown that drinking water is associated with weight loss, but nearly half of people aren’t consuming enough. Not only are they missing out on clearer skin and more energy, but it’s probably causing them to hang onto unwanted weight too. Get into the habit of drinking a big glass of water first thing in the morning and then with meals throughout the day. This will ensure that your body is hydrated enough to metabolize fat into energy and allow you to lose weight.
Gain some muscle
Since muscle is more metabolically active, increasing your muscle mass enables you to burn more calories, even at rest. Incorporating strength exercises into your weekly routine will help you to increase muscle and use more calories throughout the day (even when you’re not exercising). This also has the added benefit of making your body look more toned, which of course can boost your confidence levels too. Learn more about the amazing benefits of strength training here.
Even more metabolism-boosting advice
It’s not all about what you eat and which exercise you do. You can actually ‘reset’ a damaged metabolism and get it working harder for you once again. There are some excellent tips to help you do just that in this video:
Are there any metabolism boosting foods?
If you believe you may be suffering from a slow metabolism, and seem to be spending your days looking for a way how to boost metabolism, it may seem counterintuitive to eat more of something, but when it comes to protein, this theory goes out of the window.
When it comes to metabolism boosting foods, protein is key. Protein supports muscle growth, so it will help you develop lean mass that’s more metabolically active. This is great in itself, but also, it’s pretty much impossible to overeat when you fill up on protein, as not only is it extremely filling, excess energy from it gets excreted from the body much faster than that from carbs and fats. Energy from carbohydrates and fats both get stored very easily (causing weight gain) if overeaten.
Taking metabolism booster supplements like PhenQ can also help to control your appetite. So increasing your protein intake at the same time as supplementing with a product such as PhenQ could make a huge difference to the speed of your metabolism.
Are there any metabolism boosting supplements?
Now we may be biased, but we believe that the best metabolism booster is PhenQ. Sure you knew we were going to say that, but before you dismiss it, hear us out.
No metabolism boosting supplement you take should put your health at risk, and PhenQ certainly doesn’t do that. Filled with completely 100-percent natural ingredients and causing absolutely no nasty side effects whatsoever, you can’t get a much safer metabolism boosting supplement than PhenQ.
Containing many of the most well-known natural metabolism boosters available, including Capsimax powder, Chromium Picolinate and Caffeine, PhenQ takes the guesswork out of supplementation.
Men and women – does the advice differ?
When it comes down to sex and weight loss, men always tend to have an easier time than women. This is mainly down to the fact that women are designed to carry more excess body fat than men, so their bodies resist weight loss to a greater degree.
Although women may see slower results than men, the advice basically remains the same – stick to the principles above, and you will boost your metabolism, lose weight more easily and maintain that weight loss too.
Conclusion
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Without a doubt, if you’ve been dieting for most of your adult life, your metabolism will have been negatively affected. However, armed with the steps above, hopefully now you truly understand how to increase the speed of your metabolism for good. Just be kind to yourself, be patient, stop crash dieting and allow your body the time to rebuild it’s metabolism back to a normal level. And remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life – spend it wisely.
Do you have any tips for boosting a slow metabolism? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below!
