Boosting Metabolism

Stephen Holt, Timonium personal trainer

Millions of readers of national fitness magazines including Shape, Women's Health, Fitness. Woman's Day, Family Circle, Runner's World, (and many others) have made their exercise programs both more effective AND more efficient with fitness and nutrition advice from "America's Baby Boomer Expert," Stephen Holt.

Obviously, many people – maybe even you – want to or need to lose weight. In our society, it’s easier and easier to eat high fat and low nutrient food, which makes it easier to gain weight. There are countless methods you should combine if you want to lose weight in a healthy way.

The obvious way, of course, is to eat less. Or you can try to improve your diet and make better food choices.

Boosting metabolism is also an obvious way to lose weight, and many people do this through exercise. Your metabolism is, basically, the rate at which your body uses the energy in food. Metabolism is individual with different people naturally having different metabolic rates.

If you want to boost your metabolism there are several different approaches. Exercise is one of the best choices to help you increase your metabolism.

Be sure to vary your methods of exercise – muscle building will help by boosting metabolism as well as using up more calories in the long term, and aerobic exercise, which can even be just going for a short walk, will slowly build up a higher metabolism, as well as increasing all around health.

Another way of boosting metabolism which may at first seem counter productive is to eat more often. If you eat too few calories in a day, rather than boosting your metabolism, you are actually lowering it.

Your cells start learning to survive on fewer calories, and no longer need as many calories. This is sometimes called starvation mode. This mode is a lowered metabolic rate your body would slip down to if you had to survive a famine. Cells don’t work as well in starvation mode. This is why it is important to eat breakfast each day.

Ccertain foods can help in boosting metabolism. Sugary foods do not help (these actually slow metabolism rather than speed it up), but research shows some spicy foods can accelerate weight loss by boosting metabolism. Eating small, tasty, and healthy meals several times a day is the best approach when trying to lose weight.

Sleep and stress also affect your efforts at boosting metabolism. Stress slows your metabolism and releases steroids called cortisol into your body that cause your metabolism to slow, besides the fact that many dieters often want to eat more and unhealthy food when they become stressed.

Sleep is helpful in boosting metabolism. Eight or nine hours a night is best for most people. If you exercise on a regular basis your metabolism will actually function better. Boosting metabolism is important because as people get older, metabolism inevitably slows down.

By boosting metabolism, you’ll keep your body fit and at optimum energy levels. So go out! Take a walk; actually take one three times a week for at least thirty minutes.

Check for Boosting Metabolism Resources

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