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metabolism
how do you get a higher metabolism?
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Boost Your Metabolism!
Article by Garden of Life in the TransformYourHealth Newsletter.
Looking to lose weight? Or maintain your weight loss? One of the best ways to do this is by boosting your metabolism. Your metabolism refers to the processes which create and use energy everyday. In fact, everything we do uses energy. Just digesting your food, breathing, controlling your body temperature (trying to increase it when it is cold out or decrease it when it is very hot), using your brain, nerve impulses and of course using your muscles for physical activity or just to move around - they all require energy in the form of calories.
So, if our metabolism controls how much energy we expend, how can we increase it? One of the best ways to increase the energy we expend while we are just sitting around (because we all sit around and watch TV at some point!) is to increase our muscle tissue. Maintaining muscle tissue requires a considerable amount of energy whereas fat tissue requires very little energy for maintenance. In simple terms, that means that having more muscle tissue on your body means you will burn more calories at rest, while you are not exercising. What is the best way to build muscle tissue? Through resistance training!
Though men eagerly embrace the thought of building muscle and changing their physique, women are often reluctant because they think they will get bulky. Let me reassure you that you won’t get huge by lifting weights -- quite the contrary in fact. Muscle tissue takes up a small amount of space compared to fat tissue and, the only way professional female weightlifters get really big is by lifting extremely heavy weights for years. Also, keep in mind, women naturally cannot build mass the way men can.
Note from Christine: As a past fitness instructor I found that higher weights and lower repetitions would produce more bulky or massive muscles and lower weights and higher repetitions would produce smaller or smoother muscles. Also see isotonic exercises in the next paragraph. These are better for women that tend to gain body mass with weights.
Resistance exercise can come in several forms: weight training, isotonic exercise - where you are using your own body weight as resistance (pushups, sit-ups, lunges & squats), and even isometric exercise can be an effective form of building muscle tissue. Isometric exercise involves contracting a muscle but not actively moving your joints. An example would be flexing your biceps.
In addition to resistance training and moving whenever you get a chance (just to burn those extra calories), you must eat to keep your metabolism up! That’s right, starving isn’t the way to go. Many individuals cut their calories and resist their hunger pangs when they are trying to lose weight but, actually eating, and eating frequently is the best way to ensure that you are burning calories. When we forgo eating for long periods of time, or cut our caloric intake to very low levels, our body adapts by decreasing our metabolic rate (the rate at which we burn calories). What is even worse is that we will actually lose muscle tissue, the very thing that keeps are metabolism kicking, if we eat too little for long periods of time (think of crash dieters)!
So how do you eat, and eat often and still lose weight or maintain your weight loss? Every time you eat you burn calories just by processing your food. Therefore, if you eat several small meals a day, your ability to burn calories will jump up each time you eat. Now, this isn’t a license to eat cake and cookies throughout the day. But, it is a license to eat and eat well, throughout the day. In addition to helping keep your metabolism high, eating more frequently should ensure you are never hungry and have more energy throughout the day.
A great way to keep your metabolism high is by eating a good overall healthy diet. That means including protein, healthy fat and carbohydrates on a daily basis. All three macronutrients are vital to our health. In addition, healthy fat helps keep our appetite satiated meaning we don’t get as hungry, carbohydrates help keep our energy levels up and protein will help build that muscle you are working on! Also, digesting protein requires slightly more calories than does digesting fat or carbohydrates – slightly increasing your metabolic rate. Starving yourself or cutting out any one of these macronutrients won’t work in the long term and just leave you feeling like “dieting” is too hard. There is a reason for that – dieting is. Instead, try eating healthy, building muscle, and moving around as often as you can. You’ll feel better and keep your weight in check as well!
Garden of Life products that can help you boost your metabolism and meet your weight loss goals can be found by following the links on our health newsletter at: [Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
We have a wide variety of health articles available to help you in our online, free health newsletters at www.TransformYourHealth.com Just click on Newsletter, Info, Articles from our main menu and click on Newsletters. To your health! Christine Dreher CCN, CCH
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Sports.
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you cant make your metabloism higher... however you can work out and burn your calories
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You can't completely rewrite your metabolism, but you can help boost it. Exercise! When you exercise, you burn more calories. When you build muscle, you burn more calories-it isn't a huge difference but it will help.
Here are some links to info on boosting, maintaining, and measuring your resting metabolic rate.
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[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
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This link should tell you alot.
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
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