Tips to increase your metabolism

Often times I have heard clients say, “I’ve gained weight because my metabolism has slowed over the years”. Is your metabolism really to blame? If so, is there anything we can do to increase it?

Metabolism is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions involved maintaining the living state of cells and organisms. In regular lingo, the metabolic process of the human body is responsible for the rate at which we burn calories and our ability to gain or lose weight.

We often hear about long lists of spices, foods, and magic pills that will enhance our metabolism but let’s face it, most of these are simply gimmicks or the resultant effect is so minimal they are not worth the time and money.

As we age, our metabolism naturally slows by approximately 5% each decade after 40 years old. With that, additional factors that can impact your metabolism are gender and percentage of muscle mass. As you might guess, men typically burn more calories at rest simply due to the fact that they carry more muscle mass than women.

Now that we got all that scientific stuff out of the way, how do you really improve your metabolism to burn more fat?

Here are some my favorite tips to improve your metabolism.

• Eat frequent balanced meals.
• Build more muscles– the more the muscle percentage the higher the metabolism.
• Stay hydrated. Drink up! You don’t need to carry the 89cent gallon jug around town but the closer you can get to that gallon mark, the better your body will function.
• Watch the alcohol. Not only does alcohol have a dehydrating effect on the body it causes a significant dip in metabolism.
• De-stress. This comes up a lot! Stress releases cortisol which tells the body to halt the fat burning furnace. What ever method works for you, do your best to reduce daily stress to lower cortisol levels.
• Get some zzzz’s. Along with stress, lack of sleep will leave the body stressed which will raise cortisol levels. Aim for 6-8 hours of good quality sleep each night.
• Ditch the sugar. Try to avoid consumption of sugar to ensure your body doesn’t become insulin resistant which is associated to body fat storage.
• Try interval training. Similar to resistance training, interval training is a burst of energy for a short period of time followed by a short rest repeated 8-15 times. Intervals are quick and intense and take the monotony out of steady state cardio.  The major benefit here is a huge boost in fat mobilization.

If you want to assess your lifestyle and fitness, give us a call at  613-276-3996  to book an appointment for a first free 30 minutes assessment.

Manali Haridas, the Owner and Founder of Zen for You, is a Certified Nutritionist & Fitness Trainer and a Certified Yoga & Reiki Consultant with more than 17 years experience in the field of Clinical, Sports and Holistic Nutrition and Fitness.