First Up, A Little About Metabolism…
All throughout the day your body is spending energy on the automatic functions it needs to perform to keep you alive, these subconscious activities require energy, and the rate at which they require energy is known as your metabolic rate. Even though most people don’t realise this, we are all spending energy every second of the day, our bodies never sleep, there are reactions happening right now in your heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, even in every cell in your blood, it keeps us ticking, breathing and alive.
Exercise
Exercise, in all shapes and forms, has the largest effect on your metabolism. As you perform any vigorous aerobic exercise you will elevate your metabolic rate, allowing your body to burn hundreds or even thousands of extra calories. If you want to burn more calories you simply need to increase the intensity of your workouts, there is no magic pill. Resistance training can also help boost your metabolism although it is definitely not as effective as intense aerobics. Better blood pressure, stronger muscles, flexible joints, healthy bones and longer endurance are all benefits of resistance training. As you increase the size of your muscles you will also burn more calories throughout the day every day. Every single pound of muscle in your body burns an extra 50 calories each day, even if you don’t train that day.
To learn more about effective exercises check out this article, here.
Sleep
Because you are constantly using up your energy throughout the day it is important to get enough sleep so you can recharge your batteries overnight, plus it helps with weight loss too… The hormone called ghrelin causes us to have an increased appetite, and this hormone is released when we are sleep deprived. To avoid this happening make sure you sleep for around 7 or 8 hours every night, a good way to get some sleep is to tire out your eyes by reading a book in bed. Another great method is to do a little meditation before you hit the sack, meditating helps you to clear your mind and will allow you to fall asleep a lot faster.
Diet
Try Eating Small Meals Throughout The Day
Have you ever noticed how tired you get after eating a big fat meal? Try eating smaller meals spaced out ever three hours or se and you’ll notice that your energy levels will be a lot higher. This is because if you eat smaller meals with balanced portions of proteins, fats and carbs you use less energy to digest to food and your metabolism remains balanced throughout the day. Our digestive systems are definitely not designed to process the foods which most of us eat, weather you think it has evolved or been created, either way it is built to digest healthy nutrient rich foods. So feeding it processed, modified, chemical rich junk food will only confuse the process, your body will not know what to do with it and will begin to act erratically and use up more energy. If you decide to follow this advice make sure that you are not just eating more of the same sized meals each day, you need to reduce the size of the meals which you are currently eating for this to work properly.
Don’t Restrict Your Diet
You will severely reduce your metabolism if you don’t supply your body with enough of the right type of calories. Your body will act badly to this restriction and will force itself into a “somatic response”. This reaction doesn’t just effect your digestive syste,, it will slow down every single unconscious process in your body. Your metabolic rate will resemble a yo-yo, going up and down erratically at random times in the day, often resulting in lack of sleep and mood swings. This whole reaction can be avoided by just eating lots of the right types of calories.
