Losing weight can be an uphill task for many individuals who require undue dedication, patience, and consistent hard work to achieve their weight goals. You can find many crash diets and weight loss supplements that may give you rapid results. Though these help you to lose weight rapidly. But on the other hand without making any changes to your diet and lifestyle, it will be impossible to keep your weight maintained at a healthy limit.
So, are you looking for ways to increase metabolism and lose extra fat quickly? You are at the right place. But, before we dive in and let us take a look at the different ways to help boost metabolism, let us understand what metabolism is.
What Is Metabolism?
Many people tend to link metabolism with weight loss. But in truth, metabolism is much more complex than just weight loss. It involves different chemical processes that help keep the cells in your body alive and functional. The critical function of metabolism is to convert nutrition to an energy source for running the body’s mechanism. It involves different processes that break down nutrients to provide energy for living, breathing, walking, talking, etc.
But, metabolism when burning calories and weight loss depends solely upon your basal or resting metabolic rate (RMR or BMR). This represents the amount of energy required to keep all your essential body functions running when sleeping or resting. It is the reason why your BMR determines how many calories you burn. So, if you can calculate your BMR, you can quickly determine how many calories to consume to stay within a healthy weight limit.
To put it simply, the more your weight, the slower your metabolism and the more your calories intake will be. It is why you need to lose weight, as losing weight helps make your metabolism much faster. This way your body will burn more calories and help you lose all the extra fat much more quickly.
What are the different ways to boost metabolism and lose extra fat quickly?
Unlike the common belief, you cannot make your metabolism slower or faster. But, there are several different ways that directly affect your body’s ability to lose extra fat quickly. Let us look at the most commonly used methods to help increase metabolism and lose excess fat quickly.
Strength Training
Strength training is about doing different exercises to help build muscle mass and endurance. This is important because your body constantly burns calories even when resting. People with more muscle mass tend to burn more calories than those who don’t. According to studies, every pound of muscle uses up about two calories. This number increases as you activate and build muscle mass during strength training.
Get Plenty of Sleep
Getting a whole night’s sleep also enables you to maintain a healthy weight. Lack of sleep or sleep deprivation has a significant link with obesity and weight gain. Not getting enough sleep increases the overall sugar levels of your body. As a result, insulin resistance. It increases the chances of getting Type-2 diabetes later on in life.
So, to improve your metabolism, you need to follow a preset routine. Avoid taking caffeine in any form before falling asleep. Also, please stay away from electrical gadgets, as they tend to overstimulate your brain, making it difficult for you to fall asleep.
Diet Rich in Protein
Consuming a diet rich in protein helps increase the rate of your metabolism while reducing your appetite. This is due to the thermic effect of food (TEF), which causes your body to burn more calories to help absorb nutrients from your meal.
In Fact, including foods rich in protein help reduce the chances of obesity as consuming protein-rich foods decreases your appetite and gives you a feeling of being full. There are several sources of protein-rich foods like meat, eggs, tofu, milk, cheese and other dairy products.
Introduce Good fats in your Diet
As strange as it may seem at first glance, introducing good fats in your diet help increase metabolism and encourage weight loss. It is a known fact that Mediterranean diets include food items like olive oils and nuts that are rich in healthy fats.
On the other hand, fat in the form of processed foods or fried items is a root cause of weight gain and obesity. But, even when consuming healthy fats, you need to do portion control as even healthy fats are rich in calories.
Use Probiotics
Probiotics are made using friendly bacteria already found in our digestive system. These friendly bacteria play a very integral part in your immunity and physical wellbeing. It is the reason why including probiotics in your diet may speed up your metabolism and the fat burning mechanism of your body.
You can either take probiotics in the form of different over the counter supplements. Or you can also opt for a healthy alternative of including additional food items like kimchi, sauerkraut, natto and so on.
Include Coffee in Your Diet
Caffeine found in coffee helps boost metabolism. But, the caffeine in coffee works to increase lean people’s metabolism compared to those who are already obese or overweight. But, incase you want to take full advantage of coffee, avoid having it with sugar and milk. Instead, have unsweetened black coffee.
Do Cardio Workout
Cardio workouts are popular workouts made up of aerobic exercises. These sets of exercises primarily target your heart and lungs. It is why adding a cardio workout to your regular routine may help increase metabolism that aids weight loss.
Cardio exercises also help in the reduction of belly fat in middle-aged women. So, you need to add at least a minimum of 20 minutes and a maximum of one hour of work out in your daily routine.
Have Food Rich in Fiber
Fiber is an essential nutritional element that is found in all kinds of plant-based foods. It works to increase the absorption of water in your body, slowing your digestion and giving you a full feeling. Natural sources of fiber include different nuts, seeds, grains and different vegetables.
Avoid Drinks Rich in Sugar
Switching sugary drinks to drinks rich in nutrients goes a long way in your weight loss journey. It is precisely why you need to avoid consuming drinks like soda and alcohol that come packed with calories and sugar. You can replace sugary drinks with healthy alternatives like coffee and green tea.
Add Spicy Foods to your Diet
Spicy food, especially peppers, come with a particular substance known as capsaicin. Capsaicin aids in boosting metabolism, and you may end up burning ten more calories in every meal that you have. If you love the zing of spices, then this may be good news for you. But, not everyone can bear eating too spicy food.
Start Intermittent Fasting
As its name suggests, Intermittent fasting is actually a whole diet where you have specific periods of eating and fasting. Though, intermittent fasting gives astounding weight loss results. But, intermittent fasting is not every person’s cup of tea. Each individual responds to the intermittent fasting diet pattern very differently.
In intermittent fasting, you have to alternate between eating and not eating periods. Also, you can even alternate between the days you fast and the days that you eat according to your normal routine. But, if continued on a regular basis, intermittent fasting helps in the reduction of body weight. According to a study, the eight-hour eating window gives the same results as strength training and helps build muscle mass and increase metabolism. There are different types of intermittent fasting, but before you opt for a method, do adequate research to determine if the process is suitable for you.
Add HIIT Workouts to your daily Routine
High intensity interval training (HIIT) is an action-packed exercise routine. It comprises a different set of exercises containing both periods of rest and periods of high activity. These resting periods between exercises help to keep your heart rate up.
HIIT workouts are known to have extraordinary effects in increasing metabolism and losing extra fat quickly. HIIT workouts help burn 30% more fat than standard workouts.
Final Thoughts
As tempting as it may seem, if you want to increase metabolism and lose extra fat quickly, you must avoid going on crash diets. Especially those crash diets with low calorie intake make your metabolism slower.
Though you may be able to lose weight, it will be at the cost of your overall health. But, in the long run, the overall effects of such diets are much more adverse as you end up with fewer calories and put on weight faster due to slow metabolism.
It is why to try making healthy lifestyle changes to your regular routine. These may include following the 12 beneficial methods mentioned in my article. All of these methods not only help increase metabolism but also helps to lose fat and keep your weight maintained without you feeling low on energy.