One of the most discussed and little-understood concepts in health is metabolism. It is thousands of chemical reactions that occur each second in your body. These reactions convert food into energy, repair tissue, control hormones, and keep you alive.
One part of your metabolism is your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR. This is the amount of calories that your body will burn to keep you alive. And even before you move or eat anything, your body is already burning 1,300 to 2,000 calories a day. Approximately 60 to 70% of your daily calorie expenditure is composed of BMR. So, your workout accounts for only 5 to 15% of your daily calorie burn
Therefore, slow metabolism is simply the fact that your body is not burning as many calories as it needs. And in the majority of cases, people do not know why. To fix this, you should learn how to increase metabolism on a cellular level.
1. Do Regular Strength Training
Your muscles use calories even when not in motion. Each pound of your body mass burns between 6 and 10 calories per day at rest. Fat burns only about 2. The more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns 24 hours a day, even when you sit, sleep, and watch TV.
Strength training also produces the afterburn effect. After a hard session, your body keeps burning extra calories for up to 48 hours while it repairs muscle tissue. This is referred to as Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption. It is one of the primary reasons why individuals with a greater amount of muscle have a more natural metabolism.
Try to lift weights 3-4 times a week and do some compound movements, which include squats, deadlifts, rows, bench press, and overhead press.
Do not skip leg training. The biggest muscle groups of your body are your legs. They use more energy to train and develop their metabolic foundation than any other area.
2. Aerobic Activity
Strength training will develop your muscles, whereas aerobic training will enhance the efficiency of your body.
Rather than overtraining yourself with high-intensity workouts daily, concentrate on regular and moderate aerobic exercises such as brisk walking, bicycling, or swimming.
According to many renowned physicians, one of the worst metabolic habits is excessive sitting. So try to:
- Set a daily step goal of 8,000 to 10,000 steps and track it
- If you sit at a desk all day, stand and walk for 5 minutes every hour
- Accept calls when walking
- Do household chores
- Use stairs and park further away
These little things cumulate to hundreds of additional calories burned each day.
3. Eat Regular Meals
Avoiding meals may seem like a method of reducing calories, but it usually backfires. When you starve yourself for too long, your blood sugar level goes down, and you are much more likely to overeat at the following meal. With time, abnormal eating messes with your hunger hormones ghrelin and leptin. These hormones regulate your appetite and when you are full. When you eat regularly, these hormones remain stable.
It is wise to eat 3 balanced meals daily with protein at each meal. Between meals, it is okay to have a small snack that contains protein.
Do not skip breakfast. Research indicates that individuals who eat a high-protein breakfast take lower calories during the day and have better blood sugar control.
4. Eat Enough Protein
Protein is the food with the greatest thermic effect. Your body needs between 20-30% of the calories from protein to process them through digestion. So, if you consume 200 calories of protein, about 60 calories will be used during digestion.
That occurs at each meal and during a week, and that is a great metabolism benefit.
Eggs, chicken breast, lean beef, salmon, tuna, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, lentils, tofu, and edamame are the best sources of protein. You must have at least 30 grams of protein at breakfast to increase your metabolism.
5. Metabolism-Boosting Foods
Certain foods directly impact the amount of calories that your body is burning. To obtain some real metabolic advantage, aim to add the following foods regularly:
Foods rich in protein: As discussed earlier, protein is the most expensive food to digest. The lean meat, fish, legumes, and dairy have a higher thermic effect per meal.
Green tea and coffee: Caffeine is found in both and increases metabolism by 3 to 11% in a few hours.
Ginger: It has been found that ginger is able to elevate your body temperature by a few degrees and enhance the thermic effect of food. Consuming it with meals or taking ginger tea on a regular basis has a minor yet steady impact on metabolism.
Apple cider vinegar: Add a tablespoon of vinegar to water before meals. There are studies that imply it enhances insulin sensitivity and raises the amount of fat your body burns.
Whole grains: You should go for foods like oats, brown rice, and quinoa. These have a higher energy density to digest compared to refined carbohydrates. They also maintain the blood sugar level and avoid energy crashes.
Legumes: Lentils, chickpeas, and black beans contain high protein and fiber levels. Both of them increase the thermic effect of your food and make you feel fuller longer.
Cold water: When you drink cold water, your body gets heated to body temperature, thus burning a few extra calories. Research indicates that drinking 500ml of cold water increases metabolism by approximately 30-40 percent within just 30-40 minutes.
6. Add Spices to Your Meals
Spices are one of the easiest tools to boost your metabolism. Most of your spices contain substances that elevate your body temperature and enhance fat burning. Some of the spices with high metabolism include:
Cayenne and Chili Peppers: These contain capsaicin, which has been demonstrated to temporarily raise the amount of heat generated by your body, making you burn more calories hours after eating.
Ginger: Ginger increases the thermic effect of food and has a slight warming effect on the body, which moderately raises calorie expenditure.
Cinnamon: It enhances insulin sensitivity and helps your body handle carbohydrates more efficiently. Adding half a teaspoon of it to oats or coffee makes a big difference in your metabolism.
You do not have to completely change your diet. All you need to do is add some or a few of these spices to your food every day. Add cayenne to your lunch, cinnamon to your breakfast, and turmeric to dinner, and see how it increases your metabolism.
7. Drink Lots of Water
Water plays a crucial role in nearly all of your metabolic processes. Studies show that drinking 500ml of water raises metabolic rate by about 30 percent for up to 40 minutes. Cold water is slightly more effective.
- Consume 2-3 litters of water daily. Drink more when you are active or hot.
- Begin the day by drinking a lot of water and then coffee or food.
- Have one glass of water before every meal.
- Always have a water bottle to drink regularly during the day.
- Green tea, ginger tea, and peppermint tea are some of the herbal teas that add to your daily consumption and have their own little metabolism.
8. Use a Sauna
Sauna is ideal to increase your heart rate just as moderate exercise does. In this, your body is striving to maintain its temperature, and this burns more calories.
Research has indicated that a 20-minute session in the sauna can increase a heart rate up to 120-150 beats per minute, which is similar to a brisk walk or brisk jogging.
- Take the sauna 3-4 times a week, each time lasting 15-20 minutes.
- Drink lots of water before and after a sauna session.
- End with a cool shower to make your body adjust to temperatures. This gives rise to the second tip.
9. Contrast Showers
A contrast shower is a shower in which hot and cold water are alternated. Cold excites your body to use the brown adipose tissue, a special kind of fat, which produces heat by burning calories. It is referred to as thermogenesis. Brown fat burns fat as opposed to white fat, which stores it.
- Finish each shower with 30-60 seconds of cold water.
- To have a complete contrast shower, use 2 to 3 minutes of hot showering, 30 to 60 seconds of cold showering. Repeat 3 to 4 cycles. Finish on cold.
- Begin with lukewarm, not too cool. Progressively reduce to actually cold water in a few weeks.
Do this regularly because its metabolic benefits build over time with regular exposure.
10. Do Not Trust Supplements
Do not use dietary supplements to lose weight or to burn calories. Raspberry ketones, the thermogenic fat burners, the metabolism teas, and the weight loss pills are not well backed up by clinical studies.
The supplement industry is not controlled in the same manner as pharmaceuticals. Businesses do not have to demonstrate their product functionality prior to selling it to you.
Most of them have unknown stimulants or diuretics that provide a temporary false perception of effects. Others contain ingredients in very small quantities that can do nothing of any real value.
Caffeine, green tea extract or EGCG, and creatine are the only supplements that have moderate evidence to boost your metabolism. The rest of the supplements are only marketing.
Conclusion
There is no such thing as being born with a increased metabolism. You can develop it through strength training, frequent movement, good food, sufficient water, good sleep, and daily habits.
Those who appear to eat everything and remain slim tend to be more muscular, active, sleep better, and are less stressed. The majority of them did not arrive by chance but by custom.
Whatever you do is answered by your metabolism. Start with one or two from these list.
However, sometimes a slow metabolism is due to underlying issues like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, severe nutrient deficiencies, estrogen dominance, or cellular toxicity.
At Kairos Health and Wellness in Texas, Lola, one of our functional nurse practitioners, uses advanced functional medicine testing to look deep into your complete thyroid panels, hormone levels, and nutrient status.
If you are tired of restricting calories, reach out to us today. Let’s build your plan together.