Boost Your Metabolism

Metabolism is all about breaking down tissues / cells and rebuilding them.. The cycle of this creates your metabolic rate and the rate that you need is unique to your conditions. The advice below will make sure you have a guide to keeping the metabolic cycle going, which will lead you to lean muscle mass.

1. Build Muscle Mass Strength training builds lean muscle
tissue, which burns more calories at work or at rest, 24 hours a
day, seven days a week. The more lean muscle you have, the
faster your metabolism will be. How do you start strength
training? Try some push-ups, or a few squats or lunges. Use 5
lb. free weights to perform simple biceps curls or triceps
pulls. Do these exercises three to four times per week, and
you’ll soon see a boost in your metabolism as well as an
improvement in your physique.

2. Do Not Skip Meals or Drastically Reduce Your Caloric
Intake If your body senses that food is in short supply, it will
slow your metabolism to conserve energy. Over time, the result
is that when you do eat (even if you consume the same foods as
always) your body will be slower to use the calories as fuel,
thus creating a backlog of unwanted pounds. A good strategy is
to cut your caloric intake by no more than 500 calories per day
and never less than 1200 calories total each day. Once you
determine your goal for calorie consumption, divide those
calories into 6 different small meals/snacks through out the
day.

3. Increase the Amount of Protein in your Diet Most
researchers agree that protein helps to stabilize the secretion
of insulin into your blood stream, a process that can affect
metabolism. The average person would benefit from protein intake
at a minimum of 70 grams or higher each day.

4. Aerobic Workout 3 Days a Week Even though exercise doesn’t
affect your RMR, the extra calories you burn could add up to an
additional 1-2 pounds of weight loss per month.

5. Increase Movement in Daily Lifestyle The more you move,
the more you burn! You can actually make a significant addition
to the number of calories you burn each day by relatively minor
changes in lifestyle. This can be as simple as taking the stairs
instead of the elevator; park a distance from the mall or
office; window-shop with your best friend rather than sit over
coffee; walk the dog instead of just let him out; do a little
gardening or clean house while you talk on the phone. Making
these types of changes for just 20 minutes of your day will
cause you to burn an additional 100 calories per day or an
additional pound per month. Making more of these changes can
help you burn as much as an additional 1,000 calories per day!

6. Go For an Evening Walk Although exercising any time is
good for you, evening activity may be particularly beneficial.
Many people’s metabolism slows down toward the end of the day.
Thirty minutes of aerobic activity before dinner increases your
metabolic rate and may keep it elevated for another two or three
hours. What that means for you: those dinner calories have less
of a chance to take up permanent residence on your hips!

7. Get Adequate Sleep As funny as it sounds, sleep
deprivation may make you fat and not just because you’re
susceptible to cases of the late-night munchies. According to
researchers at the University of Chicago, women who got less
than four hours of sleep per night had a slower metabolism than
those who slept for a full eight hours.

What about supplements? Diet supplements that claim to increase
your metabolism have flooded the marketplace. Our advice is to
beware. Stimulants (such as caffeine, ephedrine, nicotine, and
others) have not been clinically proven to increase metabolic
rates. It may be that they stimulate a person to simply be more
active, which then burns more calories.

A supplement is just that…
Use it to supplement your diet with missing nutrients and to
hydrate the body with special nutrients in order to acheive
either a anti-catabolic state or anabolic state. There is no
magic pill, so beware of miraculous marketing hype.