Power Tips to Speed up Metabolism
Your metabolic rate is the speed in which your body burns calories when you do not work out. Increasing your metabolic rate can highly improve your weight loss and help you get fit quicker, and without cutting on your food intake. In this article we will explain several practical ways you can boost your metabolism.
Strength Training
By doing strength training—i.e. weight training—your body needs more energy, as your muscles need to recover from the effort. This highly increases your metabolic rate and can even reach a point in which you burn fat while sleeping. Remember to maintain perfect technique in your workouts to prevent problems in your lower back or muscle tendons.
Eat Breakfast
Believe it or not, eating breakfast actually helps your metabolism. Many people try to skip breakfast to lose weight, which in turn has the exact opposite effect: not eating breakfast after fasting for 8 hours of sleep causes your body to realize that you are not eating enough food and to lower your metabolic rate. So don’t skip on your breakfast, and eat slow carbs like whole grain cereals that will give you energy for the entire day.
Drink Green Tea
Besides many health benefits such as decreased risk of heart disease and many more, green tea also helps speed up your metabolism. Drink one cup of green tea at the morning and one after your lunch to give you energy and keep you burning more calories. Recent studies show that a person that drinks green tea can burn up to 250 extra calories per day.
Eat “Good” Carbs
Refined carbs such as white bread, potatoes and pasta create a spike of insulin in your blood, which promotes storage of fat and may slow down your metabolism. If you eat complex carbs such as red beans or whole grain, digestion is much slower and your body enjoys stable energy level without storing the extra carbs as fat in your body.
Many people nowadays go through low-carb diets in order to lose weight, and for reason: they work. However, eating no carbs at all for more than 7 days in a row causes your body to adjust to the lack of carbohydrates and your metabolic rate slows down. Therefore it can be beneficial to have a “cheat day” (we recommend Saturday), in which you eat all the carbs you want and cut on your protein (and fats) to stay within your calorie budget. This helps you morally as well, as you will not feel bad for “cheating” at your diet and could continue it with no guilt, and will also speed up your metabolism back to its normal level. Believe it or not, by eating more carbs one day per week you will actually lose weight.
About the author: Dan Storren is a bodybuilding fanatic fascinated by living healthy and building muscle. In his site he shares his insights about mass gainer bodybuilding supplements.