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Lose Weight By Increasing Your Metabolism
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As part of my effort to shed some pounds I investigated the various ways in which a body
can lose weight. Basically it all comes down to eating fewer calories than what your body needs. If your body
doesn't take in enough calories it will have to burn fat to make up for the lost calories. That is the basic
way in which weight loss works.
It ends up that there are some other things you can do to help this process along. For example, in addition to limiting my food intake to only 1500 calories a day I am working out for an hour every day
on my elliptical machine. The exercise forces the body to burn an additional 500 calories and since I am not eating
500 more calories the body has to find those calories somewhere and that somewhere ends up being fat.
Another thing you can do to help burn calories is to increase your metabolism. Simply put, your metabolism is the
processes your body goes through all day, every day just to stay alive. Things like pumping your heart, heating your body,
breathing in and out and all of those other things that you probably never think of on a daily basis. Each of these processes
require calories and, just like working out, if you are not taking in more food calories then your body will have to find those
calories from somewhere else -- mainly from fat!
There are some really simple things you can do to increase your metabolism
and are so trivial that it is
silly not to do them. This article discusses some of these simple things.
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A high protein, low carbohydrate breakfast such as an omelet or a protein
shake will jumpstart your metabolism and lead your body to start burning
calories from early on in the day.
Make sure you have your breakfast within the first thirty minutes after
waking up. Many dieters make the mistake of skipping breakfast and therefore
“saving calories” from their total daily calorie consumption. However, in
reality, skipping breakfast puts the body in survival mode.
When the body is awake and moving, spending calories but not taking them in,
it goes into survival mode, thinking it needs to preserve its energy reserves.
This leads to a slowing down of the metabolism and burning of less and less
calories. Even though it seems counter-intuitive, you need to take in calories
to burn them. And you need to start taking them in soon after you wake up.
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When the body is continuously taking in calories, the metabolism increases. It responds to a constant supply of food by a constant firing of its metabolic furnace.
Taking in about 300 calories five times a day burns more calories than taking in 500 calories three times a day as it will keep your body in a state of
continuous high metabolism. Make sure you limit your calorie intake to your overall daily allowance, but do eat smaller meals more frequently.
It is like adding fuel to the furnace – you want a steady supply for steady fire.
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Studies show that we burn about 50 calories per liter of water we drink during the day. Strictly from a health perspective,
the optimum amount of water we should be drinking is eight glasses, or two liters a day to maximize the way our body functions.
Many people drink less water than this, and aren’t excited about the idea of a glass of water every two waking hours.
But drinking this amount does lead to burning 100 calories otherwise not burned – when you do the math, just this alone leads to a
weight loss of ten pounds over the course of a single year.
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Increasing the amount of muscle you have in your body will also increase your metabolism. Muscle is the body’s metabolic furnace that will burn extra
calories 24 hours a day, even when you are sleeping, and not just when you are exercising.
Weight training, when combined with the foods like protein that speed up metabolism, will boost both your metabolic rate and weight loss and enable you to
keep the weight off in the long term. A pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day. This may not look much in the short term but over the course of a
year this translates to five pounds lost. So lifting those weights and adding a few pounds of muscle to your body does really pay off.
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Besides containing a variety of
flavonoids and
antioxidants that are considered to be capable of battling chronic diseases, studies show that green tea also
boosts metabolism. It has thermogenetic properties, meaning it produces body heat as
you drink it,
causing the metabolic rate to go up. Studies show that an average person who drinks a green tea equivalent of 50mg of green tea extract have a 4% increase
in thermogenesis, which mounts up to 60 calories in a 1500 calories-a-day diet.
This by itself, again, is not a great factor in weight loss, however it does translate to a weight loss of about six pounds.
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Perhaps your grandma instinctively knew it; cinnamon has medicinal qualities. Besides helping brain function, soothing the stomach and helping with ulcers,
cinnamon is a helpful spice for insulin resistance and weight loss.
In a recent study held with patients treated with type 2 diabetes, cinnamon was shown to reduce blood sugar levels and increase their natural production
of insulin as well as lowering blood cholesterol. This is great news for managing and losing weight as the fat cells in the stomach are very sensitive to
high insulin levels and glucose is very easily stored in this area. A daily intake of cinnamon is very helpful in combating this problem.
You can take it in capsule form which is available in stores that carry natural supplements. Other ways of ingesting it include adding it to your
breakfast cereal, toast, on top of butter or cream cheese, or sprinkling it in your herbal tea, coffee and cocoa.
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Cayenne pepper is a warming herb and it boosts metabolism. Not only does it stimulates the system, but it improves circulation and helps reduce cholesterol, too.
You can ingest in pill form or use it in omelets, soups, stews, chili and it goes well with beef and chicken.
Although it is not a magic bullet for weight loss, ingesting it daily would lead to shedding several pounds over the course of a year.
However, people with heartburn, ulcers and gastritis are better off using it with caution as it may worsen their condition.
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Omega-3 fatty acids, largely found in fish oil and flaxseeds, increase the number of fat calories your body burns every day.
Fat burning foods are essential for people who decrease calorie intake and exercise but still have trouble losing weight due to
often genetic metabolic conditions. They are great antidotes for this problem.
Omega-3 fatty acids are found in salmon, trout, tuna, sardines, mackerel, walnuts, flaxseeds, and hempseeds. Add a couple servings
of fish to your weekly menu, sprinkle some ground flaxseeds to your cereal or protein shake, and snack on a handful of walnuts.
Since these foods all contain fat, it may seem counter-productive to take them in when you are trying to
lose weight, but they will in fact help you lose it by helping your body burn its fat stores faster.
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Calcium has been proven to increase metabolism in the body and decrease body fat. It is an essential element involved in
several hundred metabolic processes which binds to fat cells and as a result leads to less fat absorption by the body.
It also makes you feel better, as it’s needed to release the neuro-chemical serotonin as well as helping with bone maintenance and
reducing sleeplessness and muscle cramps.
A calcium supplement of about 1200 mg. a day along with a low-fat diet has been shown to be very helpful for weight loss. Besides supplemental
pills, you can find it in high amounts in milk, sesame seeds, tofu, beans and almonds.
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