The women's fitness blog

I found a great post on a site called Lauren's Fitness, so I thought I would share it. It gives 11 tips on how to increase your metabolism. Why would you want to do this? It will increase the rate at which you turn food into energy, and also generally boost your energy levels and give you a sense a health and wellbeing.

1. Eat enough
It’s extremely common for people on diets to eat too little. You will lose weight to start, but your body is smarter than you. Way smarter. It will start thinking, “this crazy kid is simply not eating enough to survive, I’m going to drop his/her metabolism, so he/she doesn’t burn as much during the day and can survive off this ridiculously small amount he/she is eating”. Bottom line, starvation won’t work as a diet, your body will make sure you don’t burn too much and die. the amount of calorie you consume is different from the amount of food you eat. Eating a lot of lower-calorie foods means you can lose weight without starving.

2. Eat more frequently
Try to eat 5-6 small meals a day. Don’t let yourself get too hungry in between meals. By getting food into your body regularly, you keep your metabolism firing, and leave your body in a much better state to burn some energy for you. The best way to do this is to plan your meals a week or so in advance, until you are able to get into the habit of eating 5-6 times a day.

3. Eat Breakfast
This is a simple one, but is still not being done in a lot of cases. By getting something in early in the day, i.e. when you wake up, you are kick starting your body. You will burn more fuel if your metabolism is up and running early. Your body is most tolerant to glucose in the morning, so you can get a fair bit of carbs into you. In fact, get almost anything into you (OK not anything…), just eat something in the morning. You have been in starvation mode all night, and need some fuel in right away to get your body firing. Not only will this get your metabolism going, you will find that later in the day you aren’t as hungry and won’t make terrible food choices, or pig out as much.

A healthy breakfast... Wish my breakfast looked like this!

4. Eat more Protein
This has lots more benefits than just metabolism. Protein is a muscle builder, you need it to grow. Lean protein is even better for that, more good stuff for fewer calories. Your body takes a bit more work to burn this stuff too, which is called the thermogenic effect. So, if you don’t get enough protein in, start eating.

5. Eat more Fiber
Same principle as above. Fiber is harder for your body to process, and you will get a small increase in metabolism through this effect. It’s also wonderful for your digestive system and keeps you regular.

6. Weight Train
Weight training is the ultimate exercise for firing up your metabolism. The more intense your exercise and the more muscles you get involved, the better metabolism increase you will get. Weight training is intense, you are pushing weights around, and you will get a good post workout increase in metabolism and burn for much longer.

7. Build Muscles
The more muscle mass you have the higher your metabolism will be. I'm not saying you need to look like a bodybuilder - please don't go for this look! But a little resistance training will create the muscle mass you need to look good and burn more nutrients.

8. Work Your Legs
Leg Weights are important for overall muscle balance, and do need to be done for many reasons other than speeding up your metabolism. However, it’s just another added benefit. Legs are often neglected; it’s the biceps that are overworked. Your legs very large muscle mass, if you work this mass, you will burn more energy, and thus, increase your metabolism post workout. If you don’t care about how muscly your legs are, at least throw a few leg exercises in there to get your body working harder during your weights session.

9. Do more Higher Intensity Cardio
Getting on the treadmill for 30 mins at a slow pace is OK. But there are better options. Doing some intense work will burn more calories, and leave you with a better post work out metabolism boost than a long slow cardio session. A 10 minute bike interval session would be much more beneficial than a slow 30 minutes session. It’s the post workout boost that is the key, as with weight training, the more intense you work, the longer and stronger your increase will be and the more you will burn whilst you aren’t even active. Scan through this article from t-nation on which type exercise is best for energy burning and speeding up your metabolism.

10. Avoid Alcohol
Alcohol is bad for your metabolism. It acts against it and will slow it down. Avoid drinking it too regularly.

11. Increase Incidental Physical Activity
This is an important one. Physical activity will automatically give you a short term boost to your metabolism. Adding some extra things into the day that you hardly realize can add up. For example, make your bed in the morning, park your car a little further away than normal, take the stairs occasionally, get up from your desk frequently and walk about if possible. Just by simply being more active during the day, called incidental activity, you will get an increase in your metabolism.