Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Raising your metabolism

Okay let's cut right to it. You want to raise your metabolism, and you want to raise it now.

Let's review one simple thing about metabolism first though. When you are saying that you want to raise your metabolism, you're really saying "I want my body to utilize the nutrients I supply it more quickly, and effectively."

We can raise our metabolism in a number of ways, whether it's by dieting, exercising, supplementing, or by relieving stress. In this post I will discuss dieting and exercise and their role in increasing metabolism.

Dieting

Since your body is constantly housing biochemical reactions it's safe to assume that we need a steady and constant supply of energy right? Well I'd say that's a fair assumption, and logically speaking it makes sense. So the first order of business is to cut your 1-3 meals a day into 6 small meals a day. In this way you are ensuring that your body has a steadier supply of nutrients, and that you will be storing less fat too. How does that happen? Well when you eat your 3 meals a day, if all of the nutrients aren't used, which they most likely won't be, then the extra nutrients gets stored away as fat. When you eat smaller meals daily, you're less likely to store fat because you'll have less excess nutrients.

Another powerful way to change your nutrient intake is to find healthier substitutes for you normal diet. This could be as simple as substituting the kinds of cereals you eat or as drastic as re-organizing your entire shopping list. For example, I have about 5 pounds of stubborn fat that I'm having trouble getting rid of. So in my first order of business I started substituting because I believe it's the easiest route. Instead of buying the normal 2% milk, which has 5g of fat (45 calories from fat) per serving, I opted for the no-fat milk. Seeing as how I have 3 servings of milk daily, I just cut 135 calories out of my daily diet! Now if you remember the calculation for a pound of fat you can see how quickly you can expect to lose weight without doing anything else. 3500calories/135calories = approximately 30. That means in 30 days/1 month I could lose a pound of fat just by substituting out my milk. Pretty easy if you ask me.

Metabolism - 1, Fat - 0

Exercising

It's important for you to exercise on a weekly basis at the very least, regardless of your weight. Not only does it reduce stress, which is a way to increase your metabolism, it also rids your body of harmful free radicals, and other waste products in your body. I won't go in-depth here because this is not an exercising guide but, one of the best ways to quickly increase your metabolism is by doing HIIT. HIIT is an acronym for High Intensity Interval Training. What this means is that instead of running for 20 minutes at a constant speed, you would run steadily for 45 seconds, and then sprint for 15 seconds, and continue that loop until you reach 20 minutes. The reason this type of training is so effective is because it doesn't let your body catch a break. What I mean to say is that our bodies are extremely resilient and efficient pieces of machinery. When you run for 20 minutes and the treadmill says you’re burning calories at a steady 15 calories per minute, it's lying. Your body quickly adapts to any exercise so that it can put out as little energy as possible to achieve any given task. Your bodily components start to work synergistically to accomplish this task. So by constantly shocking your system with intense bursts, you effectively keep your metabolism from settling down. If you adopt this difficult method of exercise you will be greatly rewarded.

Metabolism – 2, Fat – 0

In the next post I will discuss supplementing and relaxation techniques as it relates to raising your metabolism.

References

intervaltraining.net. 2008. 20 November 2008 http://www.intervaltraining.net/hiit.html.

3 comments:

Kat said...

I really liked your post. I would love to speed up my metabolism (what girl wouldn't). Is there anything in particular that vegetarians should do? I know there is the concern that a vegetarian doesn't get all the right amounts of nutrients. I also noticed that most of the diets are based on increasing lean proteins and that usually includes meat. Helpful suggestions? You seem to know a lot about your topic.

Anonymous said...

Wow - okay so now you really have me feeling guilty. I appreciate the facts that you offer and the suggestions that you provide for a variety of readers. I intend to change my eating pattern from 3 meals to the 6 small proportions to see if that helps me with the weight that I would like to lose!

You provide details in layman terms and I like the fact that the blog itself was very easy to follow.


Thanks - looking forward to the next post.

Julie P.Q. said...

Another great post, and now I'm going to try your interval training on my treadmill tomorrow (I'm one of those "steady as she goes" runners for an hour at 6.4--not too many hills, no real sprinting. Kind of boring, actually).

I really like how you're relaying science data on a general level. Maybe this writing thing is really up your alley?