How to Speed Up Your Metabolism

Your body’s metabolism is essentially the rate at which your body burns calories over a period of 24 hours. There are many factors that affect your individual metabolism and include your age, sex, weight, lean muscle mass and eating habits among others.

Step One – Eat More Often

Your metabolism automatically speeds up or slows down based on the frequency of your eating habits. If you typically stretch your meals out, over 5 hours apart, you will be negatively affecting your metabolism. Essentially, your body goes into what is called survival mode. This occurs when you wait too long in between meals that you body stops burning calories to conserve energy. If you had your meals spaced out roughly 2-3 hours apart, and mind you the meals would be much smaller, your body understands that there is no lack of nourishment and will burn as many calories as possible.

Step Two – Begin a Resistance Training Workout

The purpose of resistance training is to gain lean muscle. Not only does lean muscle look healthier and fitter than fat, it also burns more calories while at rest than fat does. Every pound of muscle you put on burns an additional 35 - 50 calories per day, without having to change a thing. Imagine if you gained ten pounds of muscle in one year, you would be burning up to an extra 350 - 500 calories per day.  Compare that to a mere 2 calories per day that one pound of fat burns and you’ll understand exactly why it is so important to put on some muscle. Although muscle weighs more than fat, it takes up less space because it is so dense so even though your scale weight may go up slightly, you actually will see inches fall off your body.

Step Three – Keep Moving

Another way to boost your metabolism is to get moving. The best training is high intensity training as it depletes your energy and oxygen stores and your body works extra hard for hours trying to recover. This is known as EPOC, or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, and forces your body to restore oxygen and energy in the cells. This in turn creates heat which translates to burning calories.