The Key to Your Metabolism
Your body needs fuel to function, and It requires energy for pretty much everything. These are things such as keeping your heart beating, circulating blood, breathing, and even thinking. Your body obtains this energy from the food you eat, and if that is insufficient, it takes energy from your body's fat storage. How efficiently or inefficiently your body burns fuel depends largely on your metabolic rate. Some people have a high metabolic rate, which means that they can seemingly eat all they want without gaining weight. Others have a low rate, and seem to gain on almost nothing.
The key to a fitter, healthier you lies in your metabolism and how clean your internal body is. Metabolism is a biochemical process that governs how quickly you turn calories into energy. Your metabolism will increase every time you eat, so it is best to eat several small meals each day, rather than one or two big meals. This will keep your metabolic rate from slowing down between meals. Avoid sugar and simple carbohydrates, as they will make insulin levels rise dramatically and are easy for the body to digest (and thus convert to fat) as well.
You use energy and burn fat when you are doing physical activity and digesting food, but you also continue to burn fat even while you are at rest. The rate at which you burn fat when you are resting is called your basal metabolic rate (BMR). There are ways to speed it up so that you can burn fat faster even when you’re not doing much. In this article you will discover tips that will help to increase your metabolism.
The higher your metabolism, the more efficiently you body will burn calories and thus the easier you can lose weight. Foods that are hard for your body to digest also help you to lose weight. However, every coin has two sides, and the flipside of speeding up your metabolism is slowing it down. You might be doing things that slow down your metabolism and allow your body to store excess fat without even realising it.
How your metabolism can be slowed down
Eating Poorly – Bin the fizzy pops and snack cakes! Treats are fine; just make them organic, healthy, natural foods. Avoid high processed fat foods.
Not Enough Sleep – If your body is exhausted then the efficiency with which it burns calories goes down the toilet. A well rested body is more efficient.
Being Stressed Out – Stress causes high levels of a hormone called cortisol in your body, which leads to belly fat. Relax and let go.
Dieting – Believe it or not, strict dieting can lead to lower metabolism. Avoid fad diets and super low calorie diets. Low calorie diets cause your body to switch to starvation mode, your metabolism slows down to keep you from burning too many calories, then when you eat again your body stores the calories as fat. Fad diets may work in the short term, but the true path to a healthier you is to improve your overall eating habits over the long term.
A Toxic Body – The accumulation of toxins in the body slows down the metabolism because the body has to work extra hard to eliminate these toxins on a daily basis.
There are factors that affect your metabolism that are beyond even your control. Metabolism naturally slows down as you age, especially in women.
Some people are the victims of an under-active thyroid, adrenal burnout or unfortunate family genetics that lead to weight gain, but there are still ways to speed up your metabolism, even if you have a horrible diet and are genetically predisposed to carrying more weight than you would like.
Tips to Speed Up Your Metabolism
Exercise - It doesn’t matter whether you cycle, swim, walk or jog, but do something to get yourself moving. A regular exercise routine is best, but remember to make slight changes to it once in awhile so your body doesn’t reach a plateau and stop improving. Ten minutes out of your busy day may not seem like a lot when you’re first starting out, but if you exercise for 10 minutes, six days this week, that’s an hour more workout that you did last week! As you and your family get used to your routine it will become easier and easier to increase 10 minutes to 12, 15 and 20 minutes per day.
Tone up, Lean muscle - If you work on building up some lean muscle mass with weight training then you are guaranteed to burn more calories than just by doing cardio alone. Why? Because muscle burns calories for you even when you’re at rest-it raises your BMR to help you burn fat!
Do Intervals - When you do interval training, for example if you jog for 12 minutes total, but every 2 minutes you increase your speed to a hard run for 1 minute, your body is working a lot harder, so you get a more intense workout.
Get Up! - Stand up from your desk and walk around the office, go up and down the stairs a few times, park farther away or play with the dog. If you use these little bursts of energy throughout the day then your metabolism will stay revved up and you’ll keep burning more calories.
Breakfast - Start early with a smart breakfast that includes only fresh fruit. When you wake up in the morning your body is in starvation mode because you’ve been fasting, but when you eat breakfast you boost your metabolism so that you start burning calories earlier, thereby burning more total calories through the day. What you eat and how often has a large impact on your metabolic rate.
Eat often - This will keep your metabolism pumping all day long, and when you eat many small meals through the day you tend to eat less at one time, which puts less burden on your digestive system and lets it work more efficiently.
Eat spicy foods - If they’re hot enough they’ll kick your metabolism into high gear and you’ll break a sweat!
Snack smart - On lean protein like nuts, seeds or hemp milk. Protein is high in amino acids so it takes more work for your body to break down, which means you burn more calories while you’re digesting it.
Chew Your Food – Chew up to 25 times before swallowing. This will save your body’s energy stores and speed up your metabolism.
Foods That Speed Up Your Metabolism
Lean meats and poultry - Chicken, turkey, and lean beef and pork all require more energy to digest than carbohydrates and fat.
Green tea - Green tea has a combination of caffeine and a chemical called ECGC. Caffeine raises your heartbeat, which makes your body burn more calories. ECGC also speeds up the nervous system, again burning more calories. Coffee (without cream and sugar) can also help by raising the heartbeat.
Hot peppers - Cayenne, jalapeno, and habanero peppers all contain capsaicin, which raises the heart rate and boosts metabolism. Studies have shown that even one hot pepper can boost metabolism by as much as 25% for as long as 3 hours after eating.
Salmon, tuna, and sardines - All of these contain Omega-3 fatty acids, which lower the levels of leptin in the body. Lower leptin levels mean a higher metabolism. Studies indicate that fish oil capsules may have a similar effect for those who do not like fish.
Oatmeal - The combination of fibre and complex carbs keep your insulin levels from spiking after you eat. Spikes in insulin signal the body to lower the metabolism. However, the oatmeal should be rolled oats, not the instant kind, for best results.
Other foods that can help your body burn calories are those that the body has trouble digesting easily. Spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, and celery are all filling choices that require your body to expend a lot of energy to process. They should be eaten raw and without sauce. Grapefruit also raises the metabolic rate, and studies have shown that there is some merit to the grapefruit diet. The calcium in low fat dairy products works in two ways, first by keeping insulin levels from spiking and second from the difficulty the body has in processing dairy. Cold water is also a metabolism booster, since the body has to warm it to process it.
Here are some Foods which will help boost your metabolism.
Apples | Celery | Garlic | Lemons | Mangos | Onions | Papaya | Cabbage | Green Tea | Nut milks
Seed milks | Asparagus | Cucumbers | Pineapple | Grapefruit | Cauliflower | Raw Nuts & Seeds
Green, Leafy Veggies | Lettuce | Avocado | Carrots | Berries | Oranges | Spinach | Turnips
Broccoli | Tomatoes | Zucchini
Why not try adding some of these foods into your daily intake and see if you feel the boost!
Trev
Sprint Personal Training
Your body needs fuel to function, and It requires energy for pretty much everything. These are things such as keeping your heart beating, circulating blood, breathing, and even thinking. Your body obtains this energy from the food you eat, and if that is insufficient, it takes energy from your body's fat storage. How efficiently or inefficiently your body burns fuel depends largely on your metabolic rate. Some people have a high metabolic rate, which means that they can seemingly eat all they want without gaining weight. Others have a low rate, and seem to gain on almost nothing.
The key to a fitter, healthier you lies in your metabolism and how clean your internal body is. Metabolism is a biochemical process that governs how quickly you turn calories into energy. Your metabolism will increase every time you eat, so it is best to eat several small meals each day, rather than one or two big meals. This will keep your metabolic rate from slowing down between meals. Avoid sugar and simple carbohydrates, as they will make insulin levels rise dramatically and are easy for the body to digest (and thus convert to fat) as well.
You use energy and burn fat when you are doing physical activity and digesting food, but you also continue to burn fat even while you are at rest. The rate at which you burn fat when you are resting is called your basal metabolic rate (BMR). There are ways to speed it up so that you can burn fat faster even when you’re not doing much. In this article you will discover tips that will help to increase your metabolism.
The higher your metabolism, the more efficiently you body will burn calories and thus the easier you can lose weight. Foods that are hard for your body to digest also help you to lose weight. However, every coin has two sides, and the flipside of speeding up your metabolism is slowing it down. You might be doing things that slow down your metabolism and allow your body to store excess fat without even realising it.
How your metabolism can be slowed down
Eating Poorly – Bin the fizzy pops and snack cakes! Treats are fine; just make them organic, healthy, natural foods. Avoid high processed fat foods.
Not Enough Sleep – If your body is exhausted then the efficiency with which it burns calories goes down the toilet. A well rested body is more efficient.
Being Stressed Out – Stress causes high levels of a hormone called cortisol in your body, which leads to belly fat. Relax and let go.
Dieting – Believe it or not, strict dieting can lead to lower metabolism. Avoid fad diets and super low calorie diets. Low calorie diets cause your body to switch to starvation mode, your metabolism slows down to keep you from burning too many calories, then when you eat again your body stores the calories as fat. Fad diets may work in the short term, but the true path to a healthier you is to improve your overall eating habits over the long term.
A Toxic Body – The accumulation of toxins in the body slows down the metabolism because the body has to work extra hard to eliminate these toxins on a daily basis.
There are factors that affect your metabolism that are beyond even your control. Metabolism naturally slows down as you age, especially in women.
Some people are the victims of an under-active thyroid, adrenal burnout or unfortunate family genetics that lead to weight gain, but there are still ways to speed up your metabolism, even if you have a horrible diet and are genetically predisposed to carrying more weight than you would like.
Tips to Speed Up Your Metabolism
Exercise - It doesn’t matter whether you cycle, swim, walk or jog, but do something to get yourself moving. A regular exercise routine is best, but remember to make slight changes to it once in awhile so your body doesn’t reach a plateau and stop improving. Ten minutes out of your busy day may not seem like a lot when you’re first starting out, but if you exercise for 10 minutes, six days this week, that’s an hour more workout that you did last week! As you and your family get used to your routine it will become easier and easier to increase 10 minutes to 12, 15 and 20 minutes per day.
Tone up, Lean muscle - If you work on building up some lean muscle mass with weight training then you are guaranteed to burn more calories than just by doing cardio alone. Why? Because muscle burns calories for you even when you’re at rest-it raises your BMR to help you burn fat!
Do Intervals - When you do interval training, for example if you jog for 12 minutes total, but every 2 minutes you increase your speed to a hard run for 1 minute, your body is working a lot harder, so you get a more intense workout.
Get Up! - Stand up from your desk and walk around the office, go up and down the stairs a few times, park farther away or play with the dog. If you use these little bursts of energy throughout the day then your metabolism will stay revved up and you’ll keep burning more calories.
Breakfast - Start early with a smart breakfast that includes only fresh fruit. When you wake up in the morning your body is in starvation mode because you’ve been fasting, but when you eat breakfast you boost your metabolism so that you start burning calories earlier, thereby burning more total calories through the day. What you eat and how often has a large impact on your metabolic rate.
Eat often - This will keep your metabolism pumping all day long, and when you eat many small meals through the day you tend to eat less at one time, which puts less burden on your digestive system and lets it work more efficiently.
Eat spicy foods - If they’re hot enough they’ll kick your metabolism into high gear and you’ll break a sweat!
Snack smart - On lean protein like nuts, seeds or hemp milk. Protein is high in amino acids so it takes more work for your body to break down, which means you burn more calories while you’re digesting it.
Chew Your Food – Chew up to 25 times before swallowing. This will save your body’s energy stores and speed up your metabolism.
Foods That Speed Up Your Metabolism
Lean meats and poultry - Chicken, turkey, and lean beef and pork all require more energy to digest than carbohydrates and fat.
Green tea - Green tea has a combination of caffeine and a chemical called ECGC. Caffeine raises your heartbeat, which makes your body burn more calories. ECGC also speeds up the nervous system, again burning more calories. Coffee (without cream and sugar) can also help by raising the heartbeat.
Hot peppers - Cayenne, jalapeno, and habanero peppers all contain capsaicin, which raises the heart rate and boosts metabolism. Studies have shown that even one hot pepper can boost metabolism by as much as 25% for as long as 3 hours after eating.
Salmon, tuna, and sardines - All of these contain Omega-3 fatty acids, which lower the levels of leptin in the body. Lower leptin levels mean a higher metabolism. Studies indicate that fish oil capsules may have a similar effect for those who do not like fish.
Oatmeal - The combination of fibre and complex carbs keep your insulin levels from spiking after you eat. Spikes in insulin signal the body to lower the metabolism. However, the oatmeal should be rolled oats, not the instant kind, for best results.
Other foods that can help your body burn calories are those that the body has trouble digesting easily. Spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, and celery are all filling choices that require your body to expend a lot of energy to process. They should be eaten raw and without sauce. Grapefruit also raises the metabolic rate, and studies have shown that there is some merit to the grapefruit diet. The calcium in low fat dairy products works in two ways, first by keeping insulin levels from spiking and second from the difficulty the body has in processing dairy. Cold water is also a metabolism booster, since the body has to warm it to process it.
Here are some Foods which will help boost your metabolism.
Apples | Celery | Garlic | Lemons | Mangos | Onions | Papaya | Cabbage | Green Tea | Nut milks
Seed milks | Asparagus | Cucumbers | Pineapple | Grapefruit | Cauliflower | Raw Nuts & Seeds
Green, Leafy Veggies | Lettuce | Avocado | Carrots | Berries | Oranges | Spinach | Turnips
Broccoli | Tomatoes | Zucchini
Why not try adding some of these foods into your daily intake and see if you feel the boost!
Trev
Sprint Personal Training