Posted on January 24, 2014 by Jenny Cromack

How many times have you heard someone say “I struggle to lose weight because of my metabolism”; “Fred eats whatever he wants and never puts on weight, I just need to look at a piece of cake and I put on half a stone” or “it all slows down once you hit 40”.

The fact is, we all have a metabolism and our lifestyle, gender and age do contribute to how fast or slow it is. But don’t despair – there are a lot of things you can do to increase your metabolism, and they don’t involve a metabolism miracle diet! This blog is going to help you understand metabolism and explain how to turn your body into a lean mean calorie & fat burning machine!

Let’s start by ensuring that everyone understands exactly what we mean by metabolism.

In a nutshell, it’s the processes and energy consumption (calories) that keeps your body and mind functioning – whether you’re resting or awake. So breathing, digestion of food, moving to standing from sitting – all requires energy, and is all managed by our metabolism.

We all have a minimum amount of energy that our bodies require to function. We know this as our Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR. And it’s because of BMR that there is now an increasing amount of research looking at the effects of crash diets and metabolic damage – or Starvation Mode as you may know it. Simply put, if you reduce your calorie consumption too much, your body will respond by storing fat, breaking down muscle and lowering your metabolism to burn less – all in order to preserve its essential functions.

So this is yet another blog which is going to tell you to keep eating! But, of course with eating comes some sensible science. If you want to lose weight, you still need to be burning more calories than you’re consuming- without depriving the body of what it needs. It’s all a clever balancing act, but here’s some do’s and don’ts to help you:

Don’t

• Skip Meals – digestion of food actually raises your metabolism (it’s called the thermic effect of food!)
• Crash Diet – your body will hang on to those energy stores and start to slow down

Do’s

• Always eat breakfast – and include some Protein in it!
• Eat Regularly – Spread out your calories and help manage your hunger by eating 4-5 small meals a day and space them so you’re eating every 3 hours
• Drink Water – your body needs it and lack of water can have the same effect on the body as lack of food!
• Eat Clean – avoid processed foods.  Eat lean proteins and fresh vegetables
• Exercise! Include HIIT and Resistance Training. With Interval training you continue to burn after your exercise and the greater the muscle mass you have, the more calories you’ll burn.
• Sleep and de-stress! A lack of sleep and too much stress can slow down your metabolism.