Metabolism and the Dieter

Morning all, Friday again and I've been doing a little research after reading an article about how you shouldn't diet but instead aim to increase your metabolism.

So what is metabolism. Well it's a very complicated chemical process that the body goes through in order to survive but for our purposes lets say it's the rate at which our bodies burn off calories.  We all have something called a Basal Metabolic Rate and this is measured by the number of calories your body would burn if you were still all day. So the more calories your body burns off just at rest the more weight you can lose.

Here are a few ways (read the same things at least 10 times so I'm not giving a source list) to increase your metabolic rate.

• Build More Muscle - the sure fire way to increase your metabolism significantly.  Every pound of muscle burns 6 cals a day just to maintain itself, a pound of fat only burns 2 cals.
• Do Aerobic Exercise - this will temporarily(can be hours) increase your metabolism, the more intensive the exercise the bigger and the longer the increase.
• Drink more Water - Your body needs water to process calories, if you dehydrated your metabolism can't work as efficiently
• Avoid Crash/Low Cal Diets - If you fall below your Basal Metabolic Calorie intake on a regular basis your body will think you are starving (you'll know because you'll feel hungry) and it slows down you metabolism in order to extend it's life, in addition it'll start by burning up muscle before it even touches your fat stores.

other weirder suggestions

• Eat more protein - your body burns more calories digesting protein that in does digesting Carbs.  (you still need a balanced diet and your body does require carbs to work efficiently)
• Eat more Spicy foods - again this is harder for our bodies to digest and it burns more cals
• Drink Icy Water - your body has to warm this water to funnily enough body temp and doing this burns more calories
• Drink Green Tea - apparently drinking 2 cups of this will increase your calories burning by around 50 cals a day.

I also read that you need breakfast in the morning to kickstart your metabolism for the day and that your metabolic rate is higher in the morning and tales off through the day.

So top tips...

Get to the gym and pump some iron
Eat a good sized breakfast
Consider exercising shortly before eating a potentially high calorie meal
Don't snack in the evening it's going straight to your hips.

With that last thought have a great weekend
Luv Suz xx