How to Lose Weight Quicker by Increasing Metabolism
Do you know that sometimes weight loss is not only associated to exercise and diet?
Sometimes it’s also about our metabolism or our ability to digest food and turn it into energy.
However there are some individuals that have hereditary or health problems that alter their metabolism to a faster or slower level.
But normal people should be able to alter it easily. Metabolism is usually dictated by lifestyle and if you know what lifestyle change you need to do, you can easily alter your metabolism to lose weight quicker. Before we can change our metabolism we should know its basic components.
It is made up of several components:
1. Movement and Physical Work – 25% of your daily caloric expenditure is used for movement and physical activity.
2. Basal metabolism – 60-65% of daily caloric expenditure are spent on basic bodily functions to keep you alive. This means that even if you sleep and sit around all day you still need 60% of your normal food intake just to get you going.
3. Heating Effect of food – 10% of your daily caloric expenditure is spent digesting the food you eat. A simple example would be, if you eat 2000 calories a day, you should be burning 200 calories a day simply eating and digesting your food.
Increasing Your Basal Metabolism
Metabolism is usually genetic, but you can increase your basal metabolism by building muscle. Muscle cells can be eight times more metabolically efficient than fat cells and they also burn more calories than fat. Of course the best way to increase muscle is to lift free weights or through strength training with exercise machines.
Good metabolism also entails complex bodily processes that rely on supplements and vitamins. These substances are extremely important to correct any imbalances your body may have.
Finally, dehydration also contributes to an inefficient metabolism, by affecting body temperature. When you are dehydrated, your body temperature lowers a bit and causes your body to store fat to raise or maintain temperature. This is why you can sometimes break through a weight loss plateau just by increasing your water intake.
Make sure you drink enough liquids, preferably at least 64 ounces of water per day, to avoid this metabolic pitfall.
Increasing the Heating Effect of Food
Resting metabolic rate typically increases as much as two to three times more after eating proteins versus carbohydrates and fats. Complex, high-fiber carbohydrates like high-fiber vegetables and cereals burn more calories than simple carbohydrates. You can increase the heating effect on metabolism by eating a lot of quality protein, high-fiber fruits and vegetables, with occasional high-fiber grains.
Increasing Physical Exertion
Aerobic exercises that increase the heart rate can raise metabolism while you’re exercising. Some experts believe that aerobic exercise also boost resting metabolism for several hours, because muscles burn calories to recover and grow.
The Hypothyroidism-Metabolism Problem
If you have an undiagnosed hypo-thyroidism, or your illness is not treated properly by your doctor, almost anything you do to raise your metabolism will fail.
So the first, essential step is to get a thyroid test. And if you have been tested and already being treated, you need to make sure your treatment is optimized; including the proper medicine and dosage, as well as supplements to support your thyroid function.
