7 Energizing Ways to Increase Metabolism and Lose Weight.
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Metabolic Rate refers to the rate one expends calories in a given period of time. Essentially, it is the rate by which we expend energy through the chemical breakdown of “burning calories”. Not only do we spend calories during periods of work and during exercise, we also burn calories at rest simply to keep our cells alive.
Some days it just seems hard to get going. Trying to find that extra bit of energy to get you through your day but it just isn’t there. The periods of low energy may not be what they seem. Sometimes just doing a few simple things will not only help your energy levels but it can increase your metabolism as well. And anyway you can increase your metabolism is a good thing.
This is a vial point to understand!
Here are 7 ways to help energize your days and increase your metabolism at the same time.
What I am referring to is known as the “Basil”, or resting, metabolic rate. In fact, you burn more during your вЂ?resting hours’ than you do during periods of exercise! For example, one hours worth of tennis or basketball could burn about 600 or so calories. One hour at rest may burn only 90 or so. But you might only play one hours worth of tennis three or four times a week, while your resting metabolic rate is what you burn 24/7. It is easy to see that 90 times 24 times 7 is significantly greater than 600 times 4. (90 * 24 * 7 = 15120 vs. 600 * 4 = 2400). The point I am making is not that exercise is useless, it is the importance of the bazil metabolic rate in determining the caloric balances within an individual.
- Get up and get out: Exercise is one of the most important energy boosters there is. Living the life of a couch potato lowers your energy levels. Your heart and lungs do not work as efficiently supplying less oxygen to the cells. Oxygen is a key component in cell metabolism and less oxygen means a slower metabolism. As your metabolism drops you burn fewer calories and gain weight. A slow metabolism will also cause you to feel fatigued and run down.
Exercise can reverse this energy drain. It increases cardiovascular efficiency, pumping more blood through the body and therefore greater amounts of oxygen, increasing the metabolic efficiency of the cells and the body as a whole. - Boost your breakfast: Most people make the mistake of either not eating breakfast or if they do it consists of a big cup of coffee and some sort of sugar filled sweet roll. While it satisfies the taste buds it long term energy output is minimal. Once the caffeine wears off and your blood sugar drops you’ll be ready for that midmorning nap.
Eating a breakfast high in complex carbohydrates like whole grain cereal with skim milk and fruit will give you a long sustained energy source that keeps your metabolism at its optimum level well until lunch. - Eight hours in the sack: Nothing recharges the batteries like a good night sleep. Sleep is the time when the body renews and heals itself. The best way to get more sleep is to go to bed earlier. That might put a damper on your channel surfing but your metabolism will thank you. Here are 5 ways to help improve your sleep.
- Exercise regularly.
- Get on a schedule and go to bed about the same time every night.
- Eat a high carbohydrate snack before bed.
- Don’t drink caffeinated drinks before bed.
- Avoid alcoholic beverages before bed. You will not sleep as soundly with alcohol in your system.
- Know your prime energy time: Are you a morning person or an evening person. Your body’s energy runs in cycles, with high energy and low energy periods. Make a note of your energy cycles, when they are high and when they are low. Plan your major tasks at your high energy times and you’ll breeze right through them.
- Have fun: Do things that make you happy. Take the time to partake in activities that you enjoy everyday, if possible. It doesn’t have to be the same thing everyday but taking the time to do something fun decreases stress and helps to motivate you.
- Take a break: Taking a break from work every one and a half to two hours helps refresh our minds and bodies. If your mind starts to wander or you find yourself wishing to take a nap during work get up from your desk and take a walk and get some fresh air. Movement is your body’s best friend and helps jump start your metabolism giving you the energy to get through the day.
- Alcohol is a downer: Alcohol, as we all know, is a depressant. While it can make us loose our inhibitions at the end of the night your reaction times are slowed and drowsiness takes hold. What you may not realize is the fatigue and slowed thinking will continue the next day. Even if you only have a beer or two a day you may notice a vast difference in your energy levels if you eliminate the alcohol.
Balance in caloric levels is the whole point in weight control. The basic calculus is simple: calories in / calories out. The amount of calories consumed should approximate the number of calories burned for a caloric balance in maintaining weight levels. For weight loss calories in must be less than calories expended. This is a very obvious, even simplistic point, but you need to have a clear focus on that basic truth. We simply have to reduce our intake (in a healthy way) while we simultaneously increase our output. The reduction of intake through a healthy diet is the subject of a future article.
This article focuses on the expenditure of calories as a tool of weight control and weight loss. The main weakness of many weight loss programs, even the good ones, is that they do not stress the importance of exercise. The main goal in weight loss ought to be the improvement of one’s health and well-being; not merely upon a more superficial look into the mirror! In fact: you Cannot be healthy without exercise! A very powerful tool in regard to weight loss is the manipulation of the resting or Basil metabolic rate. This rate does vary between individuals and even within a single individual from time to time. Size and age are important factors, which account for differences in metabolic rate between individuals. Another very important factor in influencing resting metabolic rate is the physical condition of the individual. Why this is true is a little too technical to fully explain here, but suffice to say that it has a lot to do with how your body is able to efficiently utilize oxygen in the chemical breakdown of sugar molecules in the process we simply call “metabolism”.
If we can enhance the efficiency in which this oxygen is utilized, we can thereby increase resting metabolic rate. A different, and simpler way of looking at this is in the understanding that the human body in its miraculous design is amazingly adaptive.
Push the body to habitually utilize more oxygen, push the body to habituate to burning energy at greater levels and the body will adapt to do so. What this all adds up to is the ability to increase the resting metabolic rate.
This again is the rate which we burn calories 24/7, 365 days a year. We burn calories even at sleep. The idea is that even a small increase in the hourly rate of caloric expenditure will add up in time to real and permanent weight loss.
Of course, bearing in mind that the increase in caloric expenditure cannot be offset by an increase in intake. Calories consumed must be less than calories expend in order to create a caloric deficit that will translate to weight loss. The topic of exactly how to diet in a healthy way will be dealt with at length in a future article (I hope you will look for it).
For now just understand that you actually need to create an imbalance of calories: calories in < calories out... [read more]
By following these seven tips you can boost your energy and increase your metabolism and before you know it your fatigue and lack of motivation will be a thing of the past. And who knows, you may even burn a few extra calories and lose some weight.
Source: metabolism.health-choices-net.com
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