If you’re thinking of getting into shape, congratulations, you’re taking your first steps on a long and hard path. This is one that will bring you a lot of satisfaction and, hopefully an increased lifespan and a faster metabolism. Dieting is one of the easiest methods of losing weight, provided you can keep with it but working out and especially cardio exercise is usually the best way to truly get in shape. A combination of the two is, however the best method because it manages to do something that dieting alone can’t achieve and working out can’t sustain: keeping your metabolism up.
Your metabolism is the ‘speed’ at which your body runs and dieting invariably ‘slows it down’. This means that your body loses fat quite slowly and that you will have to endure the diet for longer. Here are seven tips to increase your metabolism and burn more fat.
Seven Top Tips to Increase your Metabolism and Burn More Fat
Image Source:- www.webmd.com
1. See a Doctor
Before you start any diet it is crucial to see a doctor beforehand. Your doctor will give you a basic physical and possibly do some blood tests to find out if you’re healthy enough to go on a diet and exercise program. Alternatively, you can order blood work at a discount using a service you know and trust on-line and just take the blood work paperwork to your doctor. It is important to take these steps to make sure that you can safely start a diet and training regimen.
2. Don’t Starve Yourself
You might think that the best way to lose weight is to go on an extreme ‘supermodel’ diet. You would be very wrong and probably in danger. Fasting isn’t the answer for losing weight; in fact it can be quite counterproductive. When you stop eating your body starts burning its reserves. The problem is that our body was designed to be efficient. Our ancestors ate sporadically and their body ‘slowed down’ when they couldn’t find food so they wouldn’t starve. Thousands of years later our bodies work the same way: the slowdown in metabolism means that less fat is burned and less energy is diverted to parts of the body like muscles, which start to atrophy.
3. Don’t Push It
The easiest way to get hurt while trying to get in shape is to overdo the physical exercise, especially before you are in any shape to do that. If you force your body to the breaking point too early you can cause great damage, either to your legs, joints or your cardiovascular system. That is why you should pace yourself. Alternate jogging and walking at first and after you have some experience running switch to alternating between running and jogging. If you feel faint or dizzy stop and catch your breath immediately! If jogging is too demanding at first try power walking for a while and then slowly start jogging.
4. Eat Healthy Things
The first thing you should know when starting on the path to weight loss is that what you eat matters just as much as how much you eat. Some things are more readily absorbed into fat than others, some things are more easily digested so they keep you ‘full’ for a lot less time. That is why you should carefully change the things you eat. First of all drop any food that is high in fat. Eat only lean meats twice a week and start eating a lot of legumes like peas or beans. They are very high in protein and you will need a lot of protein in your meals. Protein keeps you full between meals as it absorbs slowly. You should also drop any ‘white’ foodstuffs. White rice and white bread are high in sugar and derivatives but drastically low in fiber. Fiber not only helps your digestion but it is hard to process and keeps you full a longer time so you should always have a big serving of fiber each day.
5. Count Calories
Though you should eat about as much as you did before starting the diet you should also always remember that quantity matters as well. Start learning the exact portion sizes, nutritional content and number of calories of the more common of the foods in your new diet. You should aim for a 10-20% cut in daily calories during the period of dieting and should maintain the regimen for a period equal in length to the initial diet. Nowadays there are plenty of apps on mobile phones and the Internet that can help you with this arduous task. Keeping an accurate calorie diary can make sure that you don’t overeat and start gaining weight again nor under-eat and slow down your metabolism or develop any medical conditions.
6. Vary the Sport
It’s good that you’re working out but you should know a few things about exercise, metabolism and diets beforehand. First of all, if you allow your exercise schedule to settle into a routine you will allow your body to adjust to it, which isn’t good. Ideally your body should face a difficult challenge every time that you go running or hit the gym in order to keep your metabolism up. The best way to achieve this is by running a interval program. Interval running programs alternate walking, jogging and running in order to provide periods of high intensity training that keep your metabolism up for hours. Anther good exercise to use together with high intensity cardio like running is weight lifting. Weight lifting is an ‘anaerobic’ exercise: they push you hard for a few seconds or minutes instead of maintaining a constant energy expenditure, like running and other ‘aerobics’. The combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercise keeps your pulse rate and your metabolism high.
7. Hot food
It might seem bizarre but spicy food, especially very hot chilies work their spicy magic on your metabolism as well, maintaining your heart rate high and allowing you to burn calories faster thanks to its boosting effect. Just be sure that you control portion sizes of spicy food, as the overall ‘hotness’ of a food does not counteract its calorie content!
By following these seven easy steps you will start burning calories and getting fit in no time. You will also get more burn for your money if your metabolism works harder, better, faster stronger as Daft Punk would put it! Just remember to be careful with both your diet and your exercise. Stay safe and get thin!