Increase Metabolism to Help You Lose Weight
One of the best ways to promote weight loss is to increase metabolism. Increasing metabolism
is a sure fire way to burn body fat and maintain body weight in the long term.
Your metabolism controls your body's ability to convert food into calories (energy) and controls
how well your body burns those calories you consume. The slower your metabolism, the less energy
you use and the more fat your store. If you increase metabolism, your body will store less fat.
How Lifestyle Slows Metabolism
When Homo sapiens first evolved, food was not as abundant as it is today. Ancient
humans had to hunt and gather all of the food sources they ate. Therefore, they had very active
lifestyles which led to very high metoblisms.
Over time, humans moved from hunting and gathering to buying food from the local grocery
store and working 8 hour days sitting behind a desk. We often fill our free time with less than
active hobbies such as TV, movies, surfing the web, and eating out. We have even invented ways
to reduce the amount of labor we physically take part in through cars, automatic can openers,
escalators, etc.
Not only do many of us participate in sedentary lifestyles, we eat high fat, high sugar,
over processed foods which have contributed to the growing obesity epidemic.
There are a number of fat burning foods that we
should be eating on a regular basis instead.
Although our lifestyles have changed, the way our metabolism works has not. Our ancient
ancestors used their metabolisms as a way to stave off death from starvation. Their bodies were adapted to store fat and conserve energy during times of decreased food intake.
So how do we battle this ancient mechanism? The only way to do it is to increase
metabolism.
How Can We Increase Metabolism?
One of the biggest determining factors of your metabolism is lean muscle mass. The more lean
you muscle you have, the more calories your body is able to burn at rest (Resting Metabolic Rate).
The other biggest factor of your metabolism is how active you are. A construction worker
is more likely to have a higher metabolism than a person who sits at a desk all day if they have no other activites outside of work.
Unfortunately, most of us have sedentary jobs, so we need to find ways to be active
outside of work through either sports, going for a walk, or lifting weights at the gym.
Increase your metabloism you need to:
- Increase Lean Muscle Mass
- Increase Your Physical Activity
Anything that gets you up and gest you active will work. I know it's hard, trust me,
I work 8 hours behind a desk with an hour commute. That's 10 hours a day of sitting and doing
nothing.
I fight back by making sure I participate in some activity as soon as I get home from
work. Whether it's going for a walk, playing drums, rock climbing or even cleaning the house.
If I do it as soon as I get home I will not make an excuse later.
Try and make exercise a habit. I know it's hard in today's day and age but it's our best
fight against slowing metabolisms. Try to
increase metabolism with
little cardiovascular exercise a day. I will go a long way.
Diet and Metabolism
How much you eat can actually decrease or increase your metabolism. As I said before, our bodies
adapted to reduce energy output during times of fast. When you diet and eat less, your body slowly
decreases its metabolism to match you calorie intake. Often a reason people plateau in their diets.
If you are dieting, try altering the number of calories you eat from week to week. This is
often called calorie cycling.
This helps to increase metabolism after a couple weeks of dieting.
Give it a try. Revving up that metabolism is the only way to fight weight gain in the long term
along with a healthy diet.
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