How to Increase Your Metabolic Rate

When it comes to losing weight, the most influential factors are the calories. You need to burn more calories than you eat. Strictly related to the calories is the metabolic rate, the rate at which your body burns calories. The faster the metabolic rate is, or the faster the metabolism is, the more calories your body will eventually burn.

It is well known that the heavier you are, the faster your metabolism is. However, even if overweight people have a faster metabolism, they still need to exercise in order to lose weight. It is very important to know the factors which influence your metabolism. Age, gender, weight, heredity disorders, all of these factors influence it. In order to be able to increase your metabolic rate, you need to be aware of these factors. Another important thing you need to do is to estimate your resting metabolic rate, because if you can estimate it, you have higher chances of losing weight.

One of the best ways through which you can increase your metabolic rate is with the aid of diets. You should never skip meals in order to lose weight. Think about the metabolism as a fire, and food as wood. In order to maintain the fire, and to make it bigger, you need to add wood to it on a regular basis. In order to increase your metabolism, you need to eat regularly. By eating frequently the metabolism will be increased. If you skip meals or starve yourself, the body will hang on to the fat and it will digest muscles, as it will believe that you will not provide it with food for a long period of time. It is a defense mechanism against famine. When you starve yourself, the metabolism slows down in order to be able to preserve the fat for a longer period of time.

When the body is in this state, it is very easy to put on weight, and to lose muscles. The main idea is to never reach the hunger state. You can eat 4 or 5 small meals each day, with snacks in-between in order to feel fully satisfied. However, the meals should be small, as eating too much can make you gain weight. The snacks should also be healthy. Junk food, sweets and other such things should be avoided, because even if they are small in size, they contain lots of calories.

Diets are only one way through which we can increase our metabolism. Exercising is the other method of increasing it. There are two types of exercises, as you probably know: aerobic exercises and weight training. Both of these exercises will increase your metabolism, but in a different manner. Aerobic exercises will increase it temporarily, whereas weight training will do it for the long run. For example, we have an increased metabolism when we jog, swim, ride the bike, and so on. However, as soon as we stop the activity, our metabolism goes down again.

Weight training is different because it increases the metabolism on the long run. There are various reasons for this. When we lift weight, the session will increase our metabolism. Once we are done with the weight lifting session, the oxygen consumption caused by the lifting will keep the metabolism increased. The third reason is the fact that when we lift weights, we put on muscle masses. But that only happens if lift weights correctly. The more muscle mass we have, the more calories our body burns. Muscles are the only way through which we can increase the Resting Metabolic Rate.

As you can see, increasing the metabolic rate is possible. However, in order to do it we need to follow these simple but, at the same time, demanding steps. We need to eat in the proper manner, and we need to exercise as wisely. Do not try to lose weight in a different way, and through popular methods such as starving yourself. They may help you lose weight, but all the weight loss comes from the muscles. By doing that, your metabolism might be affected, your thyroid could suffer, and other unwanted side effects could occur. Accelerate your metabolism correctly if you want to lose weight in the proper manner.