5 Surefire Ways to Boost Your Metabolism and Burn More Body Fat

Your body is a nonstop chemical reaction factory, with thousands of processes taking place constantly to keep you functioning. Cumulatively those chemical reactions are referred to as your metabolism. In everyday speech, however, we refer to the metabolism as the rate of calorie burn in order to provide the energy to sustain the body. The higher the metabolic rate, the greater the calorie burn. It’s no surprise, then, that boosting the metabolism helps to lose calories in the form of stored body fat. Here are 5 proven ways to do just that.

Resistance Training

Resistance training is the most effective way to build lean muscle tissue, especially when combined with an increased protein intake. Every ounce of muscle will boost your metabolism so that you will be burning more calories, even while at rest.

Resistance training provides an immediate boost to your metabolism in itself. You will create an increased energy demand while you are training and enhance your metabolism for several hours after your workout is over.

We recommend doing resistance training  three times per week on alternate days, working the entire body during each session.

Increase Your Protein Intake

Every time you eat food, there is a caloric cost in order to break down the food and absorb it into your body. This is called the thermic effect of the food. When you eat carbohydrates and fats, the thermic effect allows you to boost your metabolism by less than 10 percent. For protein, however, the thermic effect is between 15 and 30 percent.

At the same time that it increases the metabolism, protein fills us up more than either carbs or fats. That means less in between meal snacking and a greater likelihood that you will end the day with a caloric deficit.

Eating more protein will also allow you to preserve muscle mass as you lose body fat. That’s because, in conjunction with resistance training, the  increased protein effects will  help you to keep your muscle tissue as you lose body fat.<

Make it your aim to eat a palm sized serving of protein with each of your meals.

DO HIIT Workouts

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a high energy form of cardiovascular exercise that involves doing an exercise at very high intensity for a short duration followed by an even shorter rest period. This is repeated for a number of rounds. The original form of HIIT involved 20 seconds of high intensity stationary bike cycling and 10 seconds of rest, repeated for eight rounds.

HIIT training will provide an immediate boost to your metabolism while you are doing the exercise. Like resistance training, HIIT produces a post workout metabolic increase. Yet, HIIT does this to an even greater degree than training with weights. That is the result of what is known as the enhanced post exercise oxygen consumption (epoc) effect. The high intensity training creates a greater demand for oxygen that, in turn, requires more energy demand.

We recommend doing 3-4 sessions of HIIT training per week. Here’s an effective HIIT workout that will significantly boost your metabolism:

Rowing Machine . . .

• 2 minute warmup
• 20 seconds full intensity
• 10 seconds rest

Repeat 8X

Drink Ice Cold Water

If you are trying to lose weight, increasing your water intake will help you to refrain from sugar laden beverages. In addition, it will also help to keep your cells hydrated and your blood volume up. However, water, especially the ice cold variety, has also been shown to boost the metabolism.

It takes energy to bring the temperature of consumed water up to the core body temperature. If you consume half a liter of cold water, your metabolism will increase by between 10 and 30 percent for around an hour after drinking it.

Another benefit of drinking water when you are trying to lose weight is that it will help to fill you up. Many people mistake thirst for hunger. So, drinking a glass of ice cold water when you are feeling peckish will help to prevent snacking between meals. Drinking  a glass of water before you sit down to a meal will also help you to consume fewer calories.

Skipping

Investing a few dollars in a  skipping rope is one of the smartest things you can do to boost your metabolism and lose body fat. Jumping rope is an extremely intense form of exercise that works your whole body while also challenging your heart and lungs. It is an exercise that you can do virtually anywhere and anytime.

As with resistance training and HIIT, jumping rope will bring on the epoc effect to boost your metabolism. Getting into the habit of skipping for a couple of minutes when you can fit it in, such as during the ads on TV, will help you to burn some serious calories and drop the pounds.