Does attainment of your ideal weight seem to get further away with each passing day? The best way to stop feeling discouraged and depressed is to move your metabolism from turtle slow up the scale to rabbit fast.
If you have been on a perpetual diet for a while and seem to have hit a plateau, or worse, dieted on and off and gained more weight as a result, you need to learn about increasing your metabolism.
An increased metabolism burns more calories even when you are at rest. Some people are blessed with a great metabolism that is passed on genetically. If you are not one of those lucky ones, you can boost what nature denied you.
- Increase your muscle mass with weight training and cardio exercise. Muscle burns more calories than fat. Even when you are sitting still muscle tissue must burn twice as many calories as fat to sustain itself. Exercise increases your metabolism and burns extra calories for hours after you have stopped exercising. This is a cycle that get results in the way you look very quickly as opposed to ‘dieting’.
- Eat! Denying your body food may provide temporary weight loss, but it will come back ” “ with a vengeance. You may be surprised to know that eating 6 small meals or snacks everyday will help you increase your metabolism and lose weight. Going for long hours without eating encourages your body to decrease its metabolism and conserve every calorie.
- Drink lots of water. Your body cannot break down and dispose of fat without water. Even slight dehydration can cause your metabolism to decrease, resulting in fewer calories burned.
- Eat foods that cost more calories than they provide. Lean meat, fish, whole grains, many whole, fresh fruits and vegetables cost more in calories to digest than they provide. Notice that the fruits are fresh and whole. Juiced fruits and veggies do not have the same effect since the fiber that slows absorption is gone from the product.
- Drink coffee or green tea with meals. These drinks have a temporary effect of increasing metabolism. If you have them with or just before a meal, this effect will cause you to burn more calories digesting that meal.
Remember that it costs you very few calories to digest and store sugars and fat. So go easy on them. However, as your metabolism increases, you will be able to burn off even those foods without a lot of effort. Just concentrate on getting that metabolism up and let those “diets” be a thing of the past.
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