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Metabolism is your body's internal process of burning calories and converting them into energy. More specifically, it refers to the actual rate that your body is able to complete this process. Everyone's rate of metabolism is different and very few people have a naturally fast metabolism. Overweight people generally have slow metabolisms while fit and healthy people usually have a faster metabolism. A faster metabolism will allow you to increase weight loss more easily and therefore get into shape more quickly. Here are some ways that you can accomplish that goal.
1) There are certain factors related to metabolic rate that are out of our control. They include: Age, gender, heredity and issues related to the thyroid gland. As we age, our metabolism slows down. After the age of 40, our metabolic rate decreases five percent per decade. Men typically burn calories more quickly than women. This is because they have more muscle tissue, which converts energy more quickly than fat. All of us inherit our metabolic rates from previous generations. Your blood line will determine how fast your body naturally metabolizes food. Thyroid disorders can slow down or speed up metabolism but only 3% of the population have this issue.
2) Eating small, frequent meals is the best way to maintain a faster metabolism. Skipping meals in an effort to diet, works against you. The longer your body goes without nourishment, the longer it takes it to "rebound" into digesting the food that you put into it. Eating small, frequent meals keeps your body working so that it is constantly in the process of burning off calories. Eat less and eat frequently, so that your body doesn't have any "down time," which slows the metabolic process.
3) Drink plenty of iced water. The cold temperature of iced water forces your body to burn more calories, as it warms it to body temperature. Water that is room temperature does not create this same interaction. More than ninety percent of the chemical interactions in your body occur in water, so be sure to drink plenty of water.
4) You can dramatically increase your metabolism with aerobic exercise too. Exercising three times a week and increasing your heart rate for at least 30 minutes can have positive results for your body and the long lasting effects can be significant.
5) Weight training can significantly boost your metabolic rate several ways. The physical act of this type of exercise burns calories by itself. The secret though is building muscle mass. Muscle burns more calories than fat, even if you are not doing anything at all. Believe it or not, muscle actually burns 73 more calories per kilogram, per day than fat does. This means that the more muscle you build, the higher your resting metabolic rate will be. Your resting metabolic rate is the rate that your body metabolizes energy, even when your body is at rest. That means that you can even be asleep and those extra muscles are burning away extra calories that the fat cells normally would not be. Every muscle cell that you gain works like a little factory that is constantly burning calories for you. The more muscle that you have, the more calories that you burn, every hour of the day. Muscle mass is an essential ingredient to speeding up metabolism.
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