How to increase metabolism?

The first step to losing some fats, other than cutting the food intake and exercising tirelessly, is to increase your metabolism. In fact, if you can successfully gain a significant increase in metabolism, cutting down on your food intake will seem redundant and unnecessary. These are some methods to increasing your metabolism:

1. TONE UP THOSE MUSCLES. Remember that muscles generally call for more calories for maintenance, so by building up more muscles, the basal metabolic rate simply increases.
2. INCREASE THE NUMBER OF MITOCHONDRIA. Mitochondria are the energy factories of our body cells, the more there is, the more efficient the burning of calories to sustain our increased stamina in working out, which in turn burns more calories. To increase the number of mitochondria, we need to exercise at 80% of our maximum heart rate. More...
3. SLEEP MORE. According to research, lack of sleep can decrease the number of calories your body burns because when sleeping, our body performs more repair and restoration than when awake. Since the rate of calories your body burns at rest represents about 60% to 75% of your total daily calorie burning, the less sleep you get, will mean lesser calorie burnt for the day, which means a slowed metabolism.
4. EAT LESS BUT MORE OFTEN. Digesting food is one of the activity that burns lots of energy. Each time you eat, you stimulate your metabolism for a short period of time for digestion, which means that the more often you eat, the more you’ll increase your metabolism. Eating every 2 to 3 hours feeds muscle and starves fat. By eating frequently, you reassure your body that you aren’t going to starve; that food will always be available, thus reducing the need to slow down metabolism to store energy to last the hours before the next meal. As a matter of fact, skipping breakfast actually frightens your body into storing fat, just in case your next meal never comes. This is called the 'starvation response', which springs in everytime our body senses hunger (note that it's not 'you' who feels hungry that stimulates the response, it's a very natural process that your body goes into once the period of 'food-less time' goes beyond a few hours). STIMULATE YOUR DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. This is something you can do too to lengthen your digesting process, which is to allow yourself to salivate (when looking at nice food) and imagine yourself eating before your meal, this will kick-start the metabolism and achieve more burning of calories.
5. … BUT EAT RIGHT. Frequent eating doesn’t mean snacking of course! Rather than munching mindlessly, make each mini-meal complete and healthy e.g. a serving of vegetables and a healthy source of protein like eggs, chicken, or nuts. Upping your intake of high-fiber foods like vegetables is one of the best ways to increase your metabolism. Fiber is a non-digestible carbohydrate, but the body tries hard to break it down anyway, using up energy thus boosting metabolism in the process. Plus, vegetables are low in calories, yet high in nutrients, a huge boon for your weight loss efforts.
6. EAT FISH. EPA and DHA, the omega-3 fatty acids found only in fish oil, are found to have the power to dramatically boost your metabolism by as much as 400 calories per day. Fish/salmon oil increases levels of fat-burning enzymes and decreases levels of fat-storage enzymes in your body. For the best metabolism boosting benefit, choose capsules containing at least 300 milligrams of EPA and DHA total.
7. ALLOW YOUR NATURAL BODY COOLING/HEATING SYSTEM TO WORK. Keeping ourselves too comfortable with the help of modern appliances like air-con and heater reduces the energy we expend to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. So do give your natural body cooling/heating system to work once in a while to burn some extra calories.
8. EXERCISE! Not only does it increases metabolism, exercising helps to build muscles as mentioned in point 1 above. It also stimulates the production of endorphines which lifts your spirits just like chocolates do!
9. 'EXERCISE' CONTINUES... After exercising, our increased metabolism doesn't stop right away, in fact, the increased rate can continue up to 24 hours for continued repair through to microscopic muscle fiber tears and other restoration from the exercise.
10. INTERVAL TRAINING. Maximize the calories you burn after exercise by integrating high intensity intervals into your workout. Alternate 3 minutes of moderate intensity running or biking with 30 seconds of all-out effort. You’ll burn another 100 to 200 calories this way, even while sitting on the couch or lying in bed.

What is metabolism?

Metabolism is one of the most important word you have to know in order to achieve successful weight loss or simply, to look healthy and feel healthy!

Metabolism, or metabolic rate, is frequently used interchangeably as they essentially mean the same thing, which is, the rate in which your body converts food into energy, for storage or for usage.

All of us has a basal metabolic rate (BMR) which is used for maintaining activities like sleep, eat, breathe and shit. And this BMR is determined by 6 factors:

1. Muscle mass (the more the higher metabolism)
2. Age (metabolism drops 2% every year, 5% once after 40years old)
3. Sex (male generally has higher metabolism)
4. Genes (if your dad is Moses Lim, don't expect to look like Eunice Olsen)
5. Your weight (the heavier you are, the faster your metabolism)
6. Sickness (e.g. Thyroid)

Surprised by some of the factors listed? Familiar with any of them? We often hear people say, "I used to be able to eat a horse and not gain a single extra inch, but look at me now...". The explanation for this will be? Yes, age. The next time your friend says this, try asking them how old were they referring to, they will most likely tell you something like 10 years ago. Also, realised how your boyfriend can eat so much more than you but not grow any fatter but you on the other hand, eat exactly the same thing yet gain so much weight? Yes, it's the fact that they are bigger than you, thus their body will naturally burn more to carry out their daily life activities, also the fact that they are males, they are made up of more muscles than fats compared to women due to the demands of childbearing and other hormonal functions of women, that is why men has higher metabolism than women. There are also those people whom no matter how much they eat, they simply do not grow fat, they don't need to do much exercise nor do they require dieting after a large meal, they simply burn off the meal! One of the explanation can be the presence of mitochondria in their muscles, which you can gain more of too! Click here to find out how!

Other than BMR, our body also uses energy for movement, especially in exercising and other activities like having sex, shopping, cleaning the house etc. Everytime we work our body, our metabolism will naturally increase to ensure there is enough for our survival needs (breathe, eat, sleep, shit). In fact, the increase doesn't only happen during the workout, it continues for at least a few more hours after the workout!

Want to know more about increasing your metabolism? Read this.