12 Tips to Speed Up Your Slow Metabolism and Burn More Calories

Your metabolic rate, or your “metabolism,” is the rate that your body makes and consumes energy in order to support your life and vitality.

Someone with a high metabolism will burn more energy (calories) than someone with a slower metabolism will. Those who are overweight struggle to find ways to burn more calories.  The factors that determine weight gain and weight loss are:

• How many calories you consume
• What kind of food you eat (100 calories from fatty foods are harder to burn than 100 calories from complex carbohydrates, for example)
• How many calories your body burns
• Your age
• Your genetic blueprint, which determines what your personal, “normal” metabolic rate is

Fortunately there are some specific things that you can do to rev up your metabolism a bit. Some of these tips may surprise you!

1. Obviously, exercise is critical for your body’s health. If you gain muscle through your exercise routine, this impacts your metabolism. You can gain this good muscle mass by having a resistance exercise routine 2 – 3 times a week. Nonresistance exercise—like walking, for example—is good for your heart, and it will burn calories for you, but it will not build much muscle mass for you.

2. Avoid sweets. Sugar is a junk energy source for you body, and it is a rich, junk energy source. It has a lot of calories in it. It is relatively easy for your body to convert and store these many calories into fat.

3. Don’t skip breakfast! Breakfast awakens your metabolism, and gives it a reason to crank up it’s pace.

4. Get adequate sleep. Research has shown that lack of sleep makes you more susceptible to weight gain. Your metabolism operates better when your body’s vitality is recharged from a continuous pattern of sufficient, restful sleep.

5. Eat spicy foods. When you eat spicy foods, like pepper, hot peppers and other spices, your metabolic rate actually speeds up a bit!

6. Drink enough water each day. There are many bodily functions that take place on a cellular level that requires water. When your body doesn’t have enough water, some of these bodily operations slow down. Water is also needed to carry away the toxins created when the body burns fat.

7. Don’t skip meals. Skipping meals causes your metabolism to slow down and conserve it’s energy, which means that it deliberately burns fewer calories. In effect, it goes into “starvation mode.”

8. Eat more meals throughout the day, but eat smaller meals. Instead of grouping your food intake into breakfast, lunch and supper, take that same amount of food and eat it more frequently. For example, try to eat four to six times a day, two or three hours apart. This practice has two beneficial health qualities:

• This satisfies your metabolism so that it won’t go into starvation mode, and
• This also keeps your blood sugar from undergoing a continual “roller coaster” affect.

9. Plan your meals. Figure out in advance for each day how much, and what kind of food you will allow for yourself. This will allow you to monitor your calories, and you can synchronize this with your 4 to 6 meals mentioned in the previous tip.

10. Find ways to reduce stress. Stress is toxic to your body’s health, but it also causes you to gain weight! When you put your body through emotional and physical stress, your body secretes a steroid called cortisol, which affects your metabolism, slowing it down.

11. Make sure you have fruit, beans, grains and vegetables in your diet.

12. Drink green tea. It speeds up your metabolism without caffeine.

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