15 Simple Metabolism Boosting Secrets

Your metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories.
The faster you burn calories the more weight you can lose even
if you eat the same amount, so it makes sense to do everything
you can to boost your metabolic rate if you’re trying to lose a
few pounds.

You use about 60% of the calories you need each day just by
being alive. That’s your basal (or resting) metabolism. About
30% of the calories are accounted for by how much you move (your
activity metabolism). The remaining 10% are used up by the
process of digesting food (your thermic metabolism).

By making some simple changes you can fire up all three types of
metabolism and become leaner faster.

1. Eat little and often

Small and regular meals throughout the day will keep your
metabolism high. If you eat the same amount of food in just one
or two large meals as you do in five or six mini-meals and
snacks you will burn fewer calories. This is because your
metabolism slows down between meals. Never skip meals to save
calories. Having a low-calorie snack will work much better and
will also stop you falling ravenously on the nearest chocolate
bar later in the day.

2. Eat breakfast

Your metabolism slows down overnight. When you have been through
a period of more than eight hours without eating you need food
to get your metabolism going again. So have breakfast as soon as
you can after you wake up. If you’re not a breakfast person take
something healthy with you when you leave the house and have it
is soon as you can face it. It’s not great for your weight loss
plans to have to boost your metabolism with a mid morning cookie
or cake.

3. Eat enough

If you eat too few calories, your metabolic rate will
automatically drop. This is a self preservation mechanism, which
kicks in when your body thinks you are starving. The safest bet
is to eat about 250 calories less than you need at the sedentary
level and to take 250 – 500 calories of exercise each day to
give a steady weight loss of between one and two pounds a week.

4. Eat Lean Protein

It takes more energy for the body to digest protein than
carbohydrate or fat. Studies have shown that people who eat a
high-protein diet burn more than twice as many calories in the
hours following their meal as those eating a high carbohydrate
diet. While the safety of high-protein diets can be disputed, it
does make sense to include some lean protein as part of each
meal.

5. Eat Fibre

Food with lots of fibre also gives your thermic metabolism a
boost. High-fibre foods like beans, fruit, vegetables and whole
grains simply take longer to digest and therefore help burn more
calories.

6. Spice up your food

Spicy foods (especially chilli) raise the metabolism by as much
as twenty-five per cent for a few hours after eating. So eat hot
and spicy food a bit more regularly and see if this helps you.
Just go easy on the refried beans and guacamole if you decide to
go Mexican!

7. Drink Coffee

Caffeine speeds up your heart rate and the faster your heart
rate the more calories you burn. Not great if you have heart
problems or difficulty getting to sleep however!

8. Drink Green Tea

The phytochemicals in green tea are supposed to raise metabolism
slightly by causing your brain and nervous system to run more
quickly. Although not many sizable and conclusive studies have
been done on this to date, drinking green tea rather than milky
coffee or other calorie-laden beverages will definitely help you
lose weight!

9. Get active

Aerobic exercise for more than thirty minutes not only burns
calories but also keeps your metabolism high for several hours
afterwards. The best time for exercise is in the morning as it
will help kick start your metabolism for the day. If you can do
30 to 60 minutes of aerobic exercise almost every day your
metabolism will soar. Interval training would help even more.

10. Walk it off

If you prefer to take light exercise, try going for a walk after
lunch or dinner. This boosts the rise in metabolism you get
after eating. No strenuous exercising on a full stomach though.

11. Build those muscles

Muscles burn calories even when you’re resting. For every pound
of muscle you add, you burn about 50 extra calories a day
without taking any more exercise. So it’s a great idea to
include some resistance or weight training in your exercise
regime. Twenty minutes three times a week is enough to make a
big difference in your metabolic rate as well as the shape of
your body.

12. Go hot or cold

Any extremes of temperature you experience will help raise your
metabolism by up to 20 percent as the body attempts to cool you
down or raise your temperature. Make sure it’s safe for you to
go in the sauna or on the arctic expedition though before you
try this one. You could have a go at keeping your home a few
degrees cooler than is comfortable for sitting around in winter
and restrict the air conditioning to the very hottest days in
summer. In the winter it will help you get up and get moving and
in summer encourage you to go to the pool to cool off!

13. Drink Iced Water

Another trick is to drink a glass of iced water a few times a
day. You’ll raise your metabolism just by having to bring the
water up to body temperature. Drinking water is required anyway,
of course, to keep your bodily functions working smoothly
(including your metabolism).

14. Watch the alcohol

On top of the empty calories that alcohol contains, it also has
a dehydrating effect, which slows down your thermic metabolism.
Alcohol tends to inhibit the process of metabolizing fat too,
which can lower your basal metabolism. And there’s not much
chance of you wanting to exercise after all that booze so it’ll
have an effect on your activity metabolism too. Bad news all
round!

15. Take up yoga

The chemical processes which comprise your metabolism are
regulated by the endocrine system, especially the thyroid. Yoga
has many postures which have a powerful twisting and compressing
effect on the endocrine organs, strengthening and stimulating
them and this can help to regulate and boost your metabolism. If
you boost your metabolism with these tips, you’ll be improving
your general health as well as your capacity to burn calories.
You’ll not only find that you lose weight more quickly but also
that you will have more energy, greater strength and you’ll be
able to get through everything you have to do in a day more
easily.

Copyright 2005, Janice Elizabeth Small

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