METABOLISM BOOSTING TIPS FOR LOSING WEIGHT AND FEELING GREAT

The Truth About Metabolism

Metabolism is Strongly Correlated with Body Composition

Your metabolism is related directly to the physiological composition of your body. Muscle has the natural ability to increase metabolism, and fat has the unfortunate ability to slow it down. By maintaining a proper and healthy balance of Muscle and Fat, you can positively impact your metabolism, generating more energy and helping you stay healthier and more lively throughout the day.

The easiest way to determine your body composition is through a simple conversion known as the Body-Mass Index. Although not perfect, BMI will give you a roundabout estimate of your muscle-fat ratio, letting you know what your goals should be when exercising and dieting.

Proteins Are the Best Food to Enhance Metabolism

The foods that you eat influence your metabolism powerfully. The more complex the food that you eat, the more energy it takes for your body to turn it into a useful product. Proteins take the most energy for the body to break down, so they burn the most calories.

Simple sugars and carbohydrates take the least energy for the body to break down, and have the least influence on metabolism. The body has the ability to break down simple carbohydrates and convert them directly into fat. Complex carbohydrates such as brown rice and whole grains take more energy to break down and are healthier for the body because they add fiber and other nutrients to the diet.

Women Have Slower Metabolism than Men

It may seem a bit unfair, but it is physiologically more difficult for women than men to burn fat. Women genetically store higher levels of fat than their male counterparts, because this helps with the nursing process and makes it easier for women to bear healthy children.

Men, on the other hand, have higher metabolisms, both because their bodies are less prone to deposit fat, and because Testosterone flowing through their veins encourages the muscles to grow larger, which further enhances metabolism.

The good thing about this for women is that they are biologically designed to carry more body fat than men, which means that as long as they stay within a normal range for their sex, it's not harmful for women to have a slightly higher BMI than their male counterpart pound for pound.

What Exactly Is Metabolism?

In terms of diet, nutrition, and exercise, the word Metabolism usually refers to the rate at which your body burns fat and calories, but the full definition is more broad. Metabolism refers to any activity that your body does that uses energy.

When you exercise, your body is burning consumed and stored calories in order to fuel your physical activity. Any food that you eat will lead to an increase in metabolism, because your body is spending energy breaking the food down. The problem with simple carbohydrates and empty calories is that your body expends significantly less energy breaking simple foods down than more complex foods, such as proteins and whole grains. This causes your body to store more calories than you actually need.

Metabolism can further be broken down into two forms of action: Anabolic Metabolism and Catabolic Metabolism. Anabolic Reactions in the body either store energy or use energy to build cells and other physiological structures. Catabolic Reactions refer to any metabolic reactions which free up stored energy or break down cells or molecules.

What is Metabolic Rate?

Metabolic Rate refers to the speed at which your body burns calories over time. When you hear the word Metabolism used in the context of exercise, nutrition, and diet, it is generally being used as a shorthand for metabolic rate.

The most common scientific measure of Metabolic Rate is Basal Metabolic Rate. Resting Metabolic Rate is a shorthand method of approximating Basal Metabolic Rate using weight, height, sex, and age in a less restrictive setting.

Your Baseline Metabolic Rate gives you a general idea of how your body uses energy. The more muscle you have, the more calories your body will naturally burn even in a sedentary environment. The more fat that you have, the fewer calories that your body will ambiently burn.

A Variety of Factors Influence Your Metabolism, Including Lifestyle, Age, and Genetics

Metabolism is impacted by a wide variety of different factors. Lifestyle is the aspect that you have the most control over as an individual. Lifestyle encompasses a wide variety of components, including the foods that you choose to eat and the level of physical activity that you choose to engage in.

You don't have any control over age, but it is important to recognize how age affects metabolism. Children and adolescents have incredibly high metabolism, because they directly use the energy and calories they take in to grow taller and stronger. During early adulthood, most people still have strong metabolisms, but metabolism naturally slows with age, making it harder to maintain a healthy weight.

Genetics is another factor which cannot be controlled by human beings. You got your parents eyes and their height, and you also get their physiological predisposition toward metabolism. Some people are just born to burn energy, and these people will find it easier to keep weight off than those that were born with more modest metabolism.

Metabolism is Controlled Primarily by the Thyroid Gland

The Thyroid Gland is a complex area of the brain which is responsible for controlling the way that your body absorbs and expends energy. Thyroid Hormones control how slowly or quickly that your body burns calories.

It also makes executive decisions regarding what your body does with the nutrients that you take into your body. The Thyroid decides if you need to build protein for muscle or build fat for energy storage. The Thyroid also decides whether you burn fat or muscle during exercise, and how your body reacts to other hormonal influences.

Thyroid Dysfunctions are almost synonymous with Metabolic Disorders. Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the body does not produce enough Thyroid Hormones to allow the body to function appropriately. This has a negative influence on metabolism, and can lead to extreme fatigue, reduced metabolism, and extreme difficulty maintaining a healthy weight. Hyperthyroidism is a condition in which the Thyroid Gland produces too many hormones, which speeds up metabolism, sometimes leading to rapid weight loss or a need to consume a large number of calories to remain at a healthy weight.

Both Hypothyroidism and Hyperthyroidism can be treated with medications which influence the rate at which the Thyroid Gland operates. Hypothyroidism can be treated with Thyroid Hormone Replacement Therapy which replaces Thyroid Hormone which is not being produced effectively by the brain, and Hyperthyroidism can be treated with medications which block Thyroid Hormone Receptors, limiting the influence of the excess hormone production.

Anaerobic Strength Training is a Fantastic Way to Encourage Faster Metabolism

Weight Lifting and Resistance Training are powerful ways to both help you lose weight and increase your Basal Metabolic Rate. Although there is no debate as to whether or not this is true, there is some debate regarding the mechanism by which these positive changes occur.

There is one school of thought that suggests that reducing body fat and increasing muscle mass increases your metabolism at rest, allowing you to burn more calories even when you aren't engaged in physical activity.

There are many detractors to this hypothesis, however, including the American College of Sports Medicine. The ACSM suggests that the primary benefit of Strength Training for most people in regard to Metabolism occurs during exercise and when new muscle is being developed. They admit that regular Strength Training does increase Resting Metabolism, but for most people, the Metabolic Benefits of Strength Training which occurs in the period during and immediately after physical activity vastly outweighs the slight increase in Resting Metabolism.

As You Grow Older, Your Metabolic Rate Decreases

As we mentioned earlier, briefly, your Metabolism decreases as a factor of age. The rate at which this decline occurs is different from person to person, but all people will burn less energy as they grow older.

One reason for this is that the body becomes less effective at maintaining muscle mass over time. The influence of hormones like Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone start to decline in the late twenties and early thirties, and the metabolic processes of the body start to slow down. The average rate at which metabolism tends to slow down for the individual is around two percent every ten years.

In women, Menopause can also play a more immediate factor in metabolism. It is vitally important to engage in physical activity before, during, and after Menopause, because studies have shown that women that do not engage in regular exercise lose about ten percent of their metabolism, adjusted for age-related loss of muscle mass, than women that have not yet experienced Menopause. Women that exercise regularly do not experience any additional decline beyond the guaranteed two percent per decade.

A Highly Restrictive Diet Has a Negative Impact on Metabolism

Many people believe that one of the easiest ways to lose weight is simply to cut calories. While it is true that responsibly cutting back on calories is an effective aspect of losing weight, cutting calories too much can actually have a negative impact on your ability to lose weight. If you cut your calories to less than 1,200 per day, your body is going to react to that as a sign of starvation and cut back metabolism significantly in order to help the body maintain its weight against that risk. The problem is that if you are simply cutting back in order to try to lose weight, you are going to get vastly limited results.

The best way to lose weight is to cut calories moderately and increase physical activity in order to enhance metabolism. Following this method, you ensure that your body increases its metabolic rate while also reasonably decreasing calories, which produces the most effective rate of healthy weight loss.

Experts also suggest spreading small, nutrient dense, low-calorie meals across the day in order to enhance metabolism. Eating a snack or meal every two to three hours gives your body energy and choosing foods smartly allows your digestive system to work hard to break down the nutrients contained within the complex foods that you are eating.

Caffeine Increases Metabolism

Caffeine belongs to a class of chemical compounds known as stimulants. Caffeine has the ability to positively impact metabolic rate, and research has indicated that a single cup of coffee has the ability to increase metabolism by as much as four percent as it is metabolized by the body.

Caffeine takes around twenty to thirty minutes to fully enter the blood stream, and many people actually use it in order to amplify their physical activity. Caffeine can increase energy levels during exercise and help prevent fatigue. Caffeine can also help the body burn more calories and exercise harder. It's important to consume caffeine in efficient sources, however. Black coffee contains few calories, but if you are drinking peppermint mochas to increase your metabolism, you are being counterproductive.

Of course, too much caffeine can be bad for you, and the body does slowly develop a tolerance to caffeine over time. There are some experts that suggest that the best way to use caffeine to enhance weight loss is to use it for such purposes only for short periods of time. For example, drink coffee before exercising for two weeks, then stop for two weeks.

Eating Spicy Foods Can Boost Your Metabolism

Spicy foods contain a potent chemical known as capsaicin. Capsaicin is what makes spicy foods feel hot no matter what temperature that they really are. They accomplish this by stimulating heat receptors in the mouth and other parts of the body, giving a stronger burning sensation dependent upon the concentration, measured in Scoville Units.

Like caffeine, capsaicin can also be used in order to enhance metabolism. Capsaicin is also a very calorie-effective means to accomplish this, because most hot sauces contain very few calories. Simply using a few dashes of hot sauce on your breakfast, lunch, or dinner can give you a quick and easy metabolic boost.

If you want to boost your metabolism before a workout, take a tablespoon equivalent of green chile pepper or red pepper. This has been shown to provide you with a temporary increase in metabolism which can be as high as 23 percent. If you don't want to deal with the taste, you can also get a beneficial effect from red pepper capsules. Taking a capsule before every meal has been shown to provide an average metabolic increase of ten to sixteen percent over the course of a two day period.

Be Extremely Careful When Considering Weight Loss Supplements

Weight loss pills and supplements may sound like a miracle in a bottle, but most of them also come with a significant risk of side-effects. Never use a dietary supplement without consulting your doctor, because your physician will be able to give you a responsible and professional opinion regarding their use.

For example, Ephedra used to be a widely-used energy and weight loss supplement, but was made illegal in 2004 after it was found that Ephedra could be dangerous to take for many people. Ephedra has the ability to both increase heart rate and blood pressure, which does increase metabolism, but these two factors are also associated with a number of dangerous health conditions such as heart attack, stroke, and anxiety attacks.

We also suggest extreme caution when utilizing amino acid supplements, because the human body can only process a certain concentration of amino acids and other peptide fragments before the liver starts to suffer and become overloaded as a direct result. Try to get your amino acids from the foods that you eat, not from supplements that flood your body.

Climate Has a Direct Impact on Your Metabolism

The human body is a machine that is designed to function at a particular level of body heat. Our bodies work hard to keep our internal temperature between 96 and 98 degrees, and the harder that is to attain, the more energy that will be expended to restore optimal temperature. The chemical reactions in our body depend upon a specific range of temperatures, and the body will start to fail if it becomes too hot or too cold.

Room temperature is the ideal environment for our bodies. The ambient heat generated by the body is enough to sustain an average temperature. The more it deviates from that temperature, the more calories the body will burn. Studies suggest that people that live in hot climates have Basal Metabolic Rates that are between five and twenty percent greater than those that live in cool climates.

Remember that your body doesn't care what the temperature is outside, if you are inside. A helpful tip to slightly increase your metabolism is to keep your home a little cooler or a little warmer than room temperature, depending on the season. The increase in metabolism may only be slight, but every little bit counts when you are trying to sustain a healthy weight.

Your Body Burns More Calories Simply Sustaining Itself Than Working Out

The human body burns a lot of calories just keeping you alive. On average, seventy percent of the calories that you burn during the day would have been burned whether you were running at the gym or sitting around watching television.

This doesn't mean that you should forgo exercise or anything, it just gives you an idea of the amount of work that it takes for your body to keep you happy and healthy. Around thirty percent of the calories that you burn during the day are a direct result of the activities you pursue throughout the day.

People that are sedentary always burn fewer calories than people who are active. People that are sedentary only burn around twenty-five percent of their calories through physical exertion, whereas physically active people burn around-thirty five percent of their calories through exercise and activity.