7 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism

The rate at which you burn calories at rest to keep the body functioning properly is known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR) generally referred to as your metabolism. It affects whether a person, gains, maintains or loses weight. Your genetics, lifestyle, age, gender, weight and body composition affect your BMR and together they account for about 60 to 75 percent of the calories your body burns daily when it is at rest. The remaining 40 to 25 percent is burnt by physical activity throughout the day.

Boosting your metabolic rate is a challenging thing to do considering that you can’t control most of the factors that affect your metabolism that’s why I wrote a list of 7 steps that you can follow to help increase your energy expenditure:

1. Eat enough calories.

Avoid crash diets: those involving eating fewer than 1,200 (if you're a woman) or 1,800 (if you're a man) calories a day. These type of diets tend to slow down your metabolic rate (slows fat-burning to conserve energy), which makes it more difficult for your body to burn calories and lose weight. They can also make you lose muscle and water percentage.

2. Never skip breakfast.

When you sleep your metabolism decreases since your body has less requirements. That is why starting your day with a nutrient-rich morning meal initiates thermogenesis, which is the metabolic process of digesting and transporting food. This means that breakfast gives you the energy and nutrients to start up your day and to wake up your metabolism. That’s why it is the most important meal of the day!

3. Eat more often.

Eating more often can help you lose weight. Having a small meal or snack every 3 to 4 hours keeps your metabolism active which means that you burn more calories throughout the day. Eat enough calories to at least match your basal metabolic rate (what you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day).

4. Include protein in every meal.

Your body requires more energy to digest protein than it does to digest fat and carbs, which means that it burns more calories in the process, increasing your metabolic rate. Including some kind of protein in every meal also helps you feel full longer (this is especially true when you have it for breakfast).

5. Drink water.

Water helps your body to process calories. That is why if you are dehydrated, your metabolism may slow down. To stay hydrated drink water before every meal (at least 2 Liters of water a day) and snack on fresh fruits and vegetables, which naturally contain water.

6. Build Muscle.

The BMR is much higher in people with more muscle. Every pound of muscle uses about 6 calories a day just to sustain itself, while each pound of fat burns only 2 calories daily. Strength training won’t result in much weight loss due to the fact that muscle weights more than fat, but it will speed up your BMR, helping you burn more calories while you are at rest.

7. Work out!

Aerobic exercise affects your metabolism more than anything else you can control. It can accelerate your metabolism in the hours after a workout. To achieve this include 30-seconds high intensity intervals in your workout returning to your normal speed afterward or include short bursts of jogging during your regular walk. This strategy helps you consume more oxygen and makes your body work harder to burn energy resulting in an increased BMR.