3 Tried & Tested Ways To Boost Your Metabolism & Lose Weight

As one of the key components to effective weight loss, maintaining a high metabolism is ideal. Metabolism is essentially a set of chemical reactions that has three main purposes: the break down of food into energy to supplement cellular processes, the conversion of food to set the foundation for production and the elimination of nitrogenous waste.

In the case of weight loss, your metabolic rate thus dictates how fast and effective your foods are broken down. The higher the rate, the more compounds you’d be breaking down. These compounds can be carbohydrates, glucose, fatty acids and more. Unfortunately, age predetermines the state of your metabolic rate and the older you get, the slower it becomes. Women, especially, get the shorter end of the stick due to menopause and the drop in estrogen.

Whilst it is an inevitable drop, we’ve gathered a few tips and tricks to ensure that the decline is not a drastic one. Consider incorporating these tips to maintain your metabolic rate.

1. Importance Of Protein

One surprising method to increase your metabolism is to, in fact, eat more! That is, to eat more of thermogenic foods. These foods give rise to something called the thermic effect of food (TEF) – energy that is required to digest, absorb and metabolise food. Naturally, when you consume large amounts of thermic foods, you’d be digesting, absorbing and breaking down food at a relatively more effective pace. This process will even take place whilst you’re resting.

One of the foods that cause a significant rise in TEF is protein. In fact, it increases your metabolic rate by 15-30%, 3 and 10 times more than carbohydrates and fats respectively. Furthermore, eating more protein will ensure there’d be less muscle loss. After all, you’re aiming to lose fat, not muscles.

2. Take Care Of Your Muscles

On that note, be sure to take care and maintain muscle mass. Unfortunately, as we age, our muscle tissues tend to weaken. This will definitely affect your ability to do physical exercise, much less any strenuous activities. However, there is still time to train and strengthen your body and slow down the loss of muscle mass.

Your metabolic rate also has a close relationship with your muscle mass! Exercise not only increases your metabolic rate for hours after the physical activity, but it also increases your resting metabolic rate! Thus, it’d be challenging to engage in an effective exercise routine if you didn’t build enough muscle mass. Besides, muscle tissues actually burn more calories – even more than fat – so all the more!

3. Sleep Is a Friend

We’ve gone over how sleep is crucial in bodily function and weight loss. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation will alter glucose metabolism and hormones. Ghrelin is the hormone that increases appetite and reduces energy expenditure, which translates to an increase in energy stored in your body.

Metabolism and weight loss have a close relationship and if you wish to have an effective weight loss journey, you may want to capitalise and boosting your metabolism rate. Otherwise, you can look into getting a slimming treatment, so that your body has fewer compounds to break down and digest, translating to a shorter time to reach your goal!

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