The Metabolism is the system that turns the food you eat into energy that your body can use. A fast metabolism produces energy at a faster rate, giving you more energy throughout the day and allowing you to consume more calories without gaining weight.
The most common tip for boosting your metabolism is to work out: regular high-intensity work-outs, heavy lifting, building muscle, cardio workouts, and more. However, here are eight other ways that you can naturally boost your metabolism, some you might already be doing without even realizing its benefits!
1. Eat Protein at every Meal. Protein requires more calories to digest, absorb, and process than other food categories. The metabolism is boosted for a few hours after a meal because of the extra calories used.
2. Drink Coffee. Coffee has a lot of caffeine. Besides this helping you wake up in the morning, Caffeine is known to “help mobilize fats from your fat tissues and increase metabolism” (Healthline). Overall, Coffee boosts your metabolism by 3-11% for some time after drinking a cup.
3. Drink Green Tea. Green tea is loaded with antioxidants. One of them, called epigallocatechin gallate (also known as EGCG), is known to boost metabolic rates. In addition, if your Green tea is caffeinated, you get similar benefits as you do with coffee, but slightly less due to the smaller concentration (Healthline). Overall, Green tea boosts your metabolism by 4-5% for an hour after drinking each cup.
4. Drink more Cold Water. Simply put, your body has to use energy to drink water, so drinking water increases your metabolism! If the water is cold, your body has to use extra energy to bring the water up to your body temperature.
5. Eat Spicy Food. Hot food like peppers contain capsaicin, which can boost your metabolism. Your body has to use a lot of energy to cool down when you eat something spicy: you start sweating, your face turns red, you look for the nearest glass of water, and do anything else to cool your mouth down. Overall, spicy foods can temporarily increase your metabolism by about 8 percent (nytimes).
6. Use Coconut Oil instead of other Cooking Oils. Coconut oil is high in medium-chain fatty acids, and these fatty acids increase your metabolism more than any other kind of fatty acids.
7. Get a Good Night’s Sleep. Sleep deprivation slows your metabolism. When you are low on sleep, your body processes insulin at a lower rate; insulin is responsible for converting sugars into energy your body can use. Sleep deprivation can lower insulin processing by more than 30% (webmd).
8. Stand up more. Your body uses up more energy to stand rather than sittign. Standing instead of sitting burns an additional 50 calories per hour. This may not sound like a lot, but doing this for an hour or two a day every day can make the total number of calories burned for a whole week really add up.
In essence, look for the little but easy ways to boost your metabolism: drink a cold cup of water in the morning, stand up for an extra hour during the day, throw a hot pepper into your dinner (if you’re able to handle the heat).
If you’re looking for more ways to be healthy, or if you want to talk to a health professional about making a plan that is specific to you and your health background, click the link below today to make an appointment!