How To Rev Up Your Metabolism For Fat Burning Weight Loss

Put your metabolism to work for you. Now's the precise time to incorporate a little
metabolic revving tips into your daily regimen to dodge gaining weight and enhance losing weight. We eat food for fuel. When we burn it for energy to run our bodies, the process creates heat.

Particular foods and nutritional supplements can assist the body's engine to burn fuel efficiently, helping our metabolism to stay revved and functioning well.

Keep your metabolism revved with these few tips:

• Engage in 30 minutes activity each day to help decrease weight gain and to raise metabolic rate.
• Tone your muscles by weight training three days a week.
• Start small, try walking with 1/2kg to 1kg weights. Add a hill or up stairs.
• Never skip breakfast. It may slow down your metabolism.
• Nutritional supplements, such as green tea, can help boost metabolism.
• Have a supply of protein powered healthy snacks on hand as an alternative to carb-loaded junk food.

We hear a lot concerning metabolism and often blame our "slow metabolism" for our failure to keep our weight under control. So what is metabolism, exactly? And is there something we can do to alter our metabolic rate?

Metabolism basically refers to all the chemical processes that take place within the body in order to sustain life, allowing you to breathe, pump blood, keep your brain functioning and extract energy from your food. Resting metabolic rate refers to the amount of calories your body uses daily, at rest, solely to keep all your vital organs functioning. You burn additional calories through your daily activities and formal exercise. The amount of calories that you burn each day is directly associated to your body composition.

Think of your body as divided into two compartments. In one compartment is all the body fat, in the other compartment is everything that isn't fat (eg: bone, fluid, tissue, muscle), that's the fat free compartment. The size of your fat free compartment determines your metabolic rate. Since the fat free compartment contains muscle tissue, one of the greatest things you can do to boost your metabolic rate is to strength train to enhance your muscle mass. If you build up 4.5Kilos of lean body mass, that's an extra 140 calories that you burn per day, not to mention the calories that you burn through working out.

Here are a few questions and answers regarding metabolism:

Question: Do all people tend to put on weight as they get older?

Answer: People have a tendency to exercise less, or less vigorously, as they age and that means fewer calories burned daily. As activity levels and intensity go down, loss of muscle mass can occur. This therefore shrinks the body's
fat free compartment and leads to a lower metabolic rate. Cardiovascular exercise will burn calories, and resistance training to preserve or build up muscle are a great protection against age-related weight gain.

Question: Are you stuck with the Metabolism you have or can you switch it?

Answer: We all seem to know folks who can eat whatever they want and never gain weight or those who just look at food and put on 5 kilos. But lifestyle plays a large part in determining the calories you burn per day. While it may appear that there are folks who eat all the time and never seem to gain, chances are they make healthy, relatively low calorie choices effortlessly. And many of these people burn more calories through 'non exercise' activity, not formal exercise. They move around a lot throughout the day. They might fidget more, get up from their desks regularly throughout the day to stretch, or walk down the corridor to talk to a colleague instead of emailing.

Next time You're in a public place, become an observer. You may well notice that heavier folks sit quite still and hardly move. Leaner folk might use more hand gestures, or wiggle a foot or a crossed leg. The point is, build more muscle and then use it by moving around more during the day.

Question: If I cutback calories my metabolism will slow down, so is there really a benefit to excersing?

Answer: It is true that your metabolic rate can slow a tad when you cutback calories. After all, your body's natural inclination will be to try to conserve calories as best it can. But these decreases are relatively insignificant, and if people become more active as they lose weight, this can off set these small changes. By dieting and exercising, you can help to preserve the rate at which your body burns calories.

Boost your metabolism in addition with protein. Your muscle mass works like a furnace, burning calories and stored fat for energy. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism, the faster you burn calories. Eating plenty of protein daily is essential to maintaining your muscle mass for good health, energy and efficient weight management. Find lean, healthy protein foods for snacks. Look at adding protein supplements and powders to your diet, they can as an added benefit be very low in calories.

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