Yes you can jumpstart your metabolism. A significant factor that affects weight loss and gain is the speed of your metabolism. Low calorie dieting slows your metabolism making it progressively more difficult to lose weight and keep it off.
Muscle is a metabolic active tissue. Muscle requires a certain number of calories to maintain itself. So, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even when you are just sitting still. If you frequently diet, your muscle mass drops because you are dropping your daily caloric requirement.
What is the solution? An active lifestyle that includes aerobic exercise, a solid strength training program and a healthy diet. A healthy diet means a healthy lifestyle of eating whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean protein. A healthy diet that keeps your metabolism in high gear is one that consists of eating several small meals throughout the day. Actually, if you have a healthy metabolism no food is off limits! But you must eat sweets and high-fat, junk foods less often and in smaller quantities. A healthy diet is realistic and permanent - not something you enter into sporadically just because you want to drop a few pounds at certain times in your life.
Tips for jump starting your metabolism:
Do NOT reduce your caloric intake too low. Eating a diet low in calories can trigger what is called “starvation mode" in your body. Your body is designed to protect you from starvation. During times of greatly reduced food availability, and when you eat too little, your body thinks it is starving. To compensate, your metabolism will slow down considerably. In this state your body will burn everything but your stored body fat. Eating too little poses other problems too, like nutritional deficiencies. And, if you eat more calories at a later date, your body is more likely to store those calories as fat in preparation for a possible “famine" again in the future.
Do NOT skip meals. Going too long in between meals affects your body chemistry in ways that can make weight loss more difficult. The best way to avoid this is to consume 5-6 small meals (and snacks) every 3-4 hours. Eating in this fashion keeps your metabolism always moving and provides you with energy for activity to keep your metabolism on the go.
Get plenty of sleep and rest. Current research shows that getting plenty of rest and sleep is important to keeping your metabolism in high gear. Your body needs plenty of “downtime" for internal housekeeping that keeps your metabolism in good working order. Also, rest is important in between strength training workouts to let your muscles recover so the muscle can repair and grow.
Build muscle! This is probably the most important factor in jumpstarting your metabolism. If you do not strength train regularly, up to 30% of the weight you lose could be muscle tissue. A pound of muscle burns about 50 more calories per day than a pound of fat. Muscle weighs more than fat which means your metabolism is working harder all the time. Also, when working on a weight loss program, it is important to know that muscle weighs more than fat. And the scale you just stepped on will most likely tell you that you have not lost pounds. The best way to evaluate a healthy weight loss program is by judging how your clothes fit as opposed to stepping on the scale.
Stay as active as possible. Being active means your metabolism is working faster than when you are sitting still. Vary your daily activity and exercise. This will prevent boredom and keep your body on it’s fat burning toes!
Don’t just sit there. If you are watching TV or sitting at your desk get up often and do some exercises. Walk briskly at all times. Keep your resistance band and dumb bells nearby and use them during commercials or during your breaks. Get your stability ball and sit on it at your desk or while watching TV and exercise your core right then and there. Even fidgetting can help.
Interval train. The harder you work the more calories you will burn both during and after exercise. Studies show that exercising as intensely as you can at least 10 minutes per day produces the best results. Interval training is an effective way to increase the intensity and duration of your workouts without running yourself into the ground or risking injury.
