Fat Loss and the Metabolism Go Hand-in-Hand
If there’s one thing that you must be doing as you work towards the goal to lose weight, it’s learning how to increase the metabolism.
Those who have very sluggish metabolic rates will find that they have to decrease their food intake extremely low (or else increase their exercise time to boost up their total calorie burn) in order to create that total calorie deficit necessary for fat loss to take place.
This ends up making them feel quite miserable on their fat loss diet plan and often causes them to fall off it completely.
But, what if you didn’t have to reduce your food intake back very much at all?
Wouldn’t weight loss be a hundred times easier?
There’s no question that it would.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways that you can increase the metabolism naturally so that you can see faster results without having to starve or become a slave to the gym.
Let’s have a quick look at the many ways that you can increase the metabolism so you can get started on your weight loss journey on the right foot.
What Is The Metabolism?
Your basal metabolic rate stands for how many calories you burn off each day simply existing, with no additional activities included.
Basically, if you were to just lie in bed all day and not move, how many calories you’d burn represents this number. The higher this number is, the faster fat loss progress will move along because then you’re burning up fat without even trying.
Your metabolism will be influenced slightly by your genetic background as some people are just blessed with very fast natural metabolisms, but don’t let yourself blame that for your weight problem.
If the truth is told your genetic background doesn’t influence your metabolic rate to any significant degree, so even if you do have a sluggish one naturally, there are plenty of ways to increase the metabolism so you can reverse what you were born with.
It’s really an excuse that far too many people use that really isn’t valid at all and will only hold you back from seeing success.
So now that you know what the metabolic rate is, let’s look at how you can increase the metabolism to get faster results.
Foods That Increase The Metabolism
The very first thing that you need to take into account is the foods that increase the metabolism. What you eat on a daily basis will have a very large influence on the progress you make, not only in terms of your ability to burn off body fat due to a faster metabolism, but also on how well you retain your muscle mass so that you maintain a faster metabolism over time.
Remember, muscle is very metabolically active tissue so the more of it you have, the faster you will burn off calories minute per minute, even as you sit at your desk at work.
This is why taking a good look at your diet and discovering which foods will help to increase the metabolism the most is so hugely beneficial. Here are the main ones to focus on.
1) Protein Rich Foods
The very first category of foods that will really help to increase the metabolism are protein rich foods. Protein is the one nutrient that you can eat that will automatically cause the body to burn off energy simply because you ate it.
This is an effect known as the ‘thermic effect of food’, which stands for your body burning off calories breaking that nutrient down. Each and every time you eat protein rich foods, the body will be hard at work digesting it and turning it into individual amino acids (what protein is broken down into) and this process consumes plenty of energy.
In fact, for every 100 calories of protein rich foods you eat, you’ll burn about 25 of those calories off digesting it. This means that you indirectly just got about a 25% metabolic boost just from choosing this food over a carbohydrate or fat rich food instead.
Now, obviously you cannot make your diet 100% pure protein to really take advantage of this fact as that would not be healthy or safe, but you definitely should focus on using a higher protein diet for better overall results.
Just be sure that the protein rich foods you do choose are going to be lower in fat so that you don’t get the additional tag along calories that this added fat would bring.
Protein Foods Choices include:
- Chicken breasts
- Egg whites
- Lean red meat
- Low fat dairy products
- Turkey meat
- White fish
Eat these with each meal and snack and you will naturally increase the metabolism.
2) Chili Peppers
The second great food to help increase the metabolism is chilli peppers. Chili peppers contain capsaicin, which will cause the body to burn off more energy as heat after eating it. This is why after eating spicy foods that contain chilli peppers or cayenne pepper (which also contains this component), you’ll feel a lot warmer overall.
That’s your body burning more energy off.
To help increase your metabolism, sprinkle some cayenne pepper over your protein source or consider adding red hot chilli peppers to your stir fry. You’ll also often eat less when your foods are spicy as well, decreasing your total calorie intake.
3) Green Tea
Moving on, green tea is another thing to make sure that you consume daily to help increase the metabolism. Sipping on two to three cups of this per day will not only help you burn off more calories daily, but it’s also going to be great for providing your body with some antioxidant support as well.
Getting in enough antioxidants will help to keep your body in good working order, including your thyroid, which is also responsible for controlling how many calories you burn daily. Making sure your body is very healthy is one of the best ways to indirectly increase the metabolism.
4) Water
Along with drinking some green tea, making sure you’re drinking enough water in general is also wise if you want to learn how to increase the metabolism.
Even slight amounts of dehydration can have a significant influence on how many calories you expend daily so could potentially really cut into your overall fat loss progress.
For best results, you should be aiming to consume up to ten glasses of water daily, more if you’re very active and exercise regularly.
5) Oatmeal
Oatmeal is our next food to help you increase the metabolism. Carbohydrate containing foods are good for increasing your calorie burn because they are also linked to your thyroid gland function and will help ensure that your metabolism doesn’t grow sluggish.
Oatmeal is also good because it’s very slow digesting in the body, so won’t produce an insulin spike which would encourage body fat accumulation.
In addition to that, it’s also going to supply your muscles with energy so that you can exercise harder – a key factor that will help to increase the metabolism as well, which we’ll get to in a second.
Add a bowl of oats to start your day and you’ll be burning up calories faster in the coming 24 hour period.
6) Salmon
Finally, the last of the foods that you’ll want to be sure that you consume on your diet to help increase the metabolism is salmon. Salmon is a very rich source of essential fatty acids, and these will not only help boost your metabolic rate, but also keep your body extremely healthy.
Like antioxidants, essential fatty acids are imperative for proper functioning so it’s vital that you take them in.
They’ll help to improve your focus and concentration, decrease your risk of disease, boost insulin sensitivity, and help strengthen the immune system.
So there you have the top foods that you should include in your diet plan to help increase the metabolism. If there are any you’re missing out on, now’s the time to get them into your daily meal plan.
Now let’s look at what you can do from an exercise standpoint to help increase the metabolism.
Exercises That Increase The Metabolism
When it comes to exercise, if you want to increase the metabolism, you must always be thinking ‘high intensity’.
The more intense you can make an exercise, the more calories it will burn not only while you’re doing it, but in the time period after you’re finished as well.
When you structure your workouts properly, you really can increase the metabolism for up to 48 hours after they are completed.
Let’s look at the top forms of exercise to help you do this.
1) Interval Cardio Training
On the cardio side of things, go with interval cardio training to help increase the metabolism the highest. Interval cardio training is where you stack very high intensity periods of exercise with much lower intensity periods of exercise, repeating this process 6-8 times per workout.
Your sprint interval should last somewhere between 30-60 seconds while your rest interval should be twice as long as that (60-120 seconds).
The harder you push yourself during the sprint interval, the greater you’ll be able to increase the metabolism. This really is one of the most effective ways to jump start a stalled weight loss program.
2) Weight Lifting
The second form of exercise that you must include in your program is weight lifting. Weight lifting is beneficial to help increase the metabolism because not only will it cause you to burn more calories in the hours after you complete it, but it will also cause you to burn more calories permanently if you add more lean muscle mass.
When doing your weight lifting workout program, in order to increase the metabolism the most, you want to focus on doing compound movements rather than isolation movements, you want to keep your rest periods slightly shorter to 30-60 seconds, and you want to make sure that you are still lifting a weight that fully challenges you within 10-12 reps.
Don’t let yourself believe that the best way to increase the metabolism is doing light weight training for 20 reps – that isn’t true and will just cause you to lose lean muscle mass.
Keep it heavier and you’ll do far better.
So now that you know the truth about exercising to increase the metabolism, let’s leave you with a few final tips.
More Tips For Boosting The Metabolism
In addition to getting your diet and workout down correctly, the following will also help to ensure that your metabolism is running optimally.
1) Get Enough Sleep
The first tip to help increase the metabolism is to make sure that you’re sleeping enough. If you aren’t getting seven to eight hours each night, it will show in your basal metabolic rate.
Be sure that you aren’t shorting yourself as not only will your fat loss suffer, but your performance in everyday tasks will as well.
2) Don’t Starve Yourself
The second important point to remember to help increase your metabolism is to never use a very low calorie diet for a long period of time. While you do need to reduce your calories to lose weight, don’t drop them below 1200 calories if possible.
Doing so will just cause the metabolism to become sluggish and you’ll be burning calories off at a snail’s pace.
3) Be Everyday Active
Finally, our last tip to help increase the metabolism is to make sure that you’re being ‘everyday active’. This means making sure that it’s not just at the gym where you get physical activity.
Instead, walk to work, walk up the stairs, get up to change the station, do the dishes by hand, and so on. All these little actions will add up over the day and can increase your metabolism and cause you to burn some serious calories as well.
Do not ever underestimate how large of an impact this can have.
So there you have the top things to remember to increase your metabolism so that you can move closer to reaching your goal weight. If you strive to increase the metabolism rather than crash dieting, you’ll see better results and feel a lot healthier as well.
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