What Is Metabolism?Metabolism or Metabolic Rate refers to the number of calories burned to maintain body functions and fuel your activities. It’s more than just calorie burning. Metabolism also encompasses chemical and physical reactions occurring in every one of your body’s tissues.
Metabolism is both affected by genetic factors as well as a complex interaction of lifestyle, nutrition and exercise habits.
Many diseases, including thyroid disorders and diabetes, can interfere with metabolic processes. Talk to your doctor about ruling out such medical conditions if you suspect one might affect you.
1. Nutrition
Are you getting enough nutrients?
Taking in too many refined sugars and carbs puts your body on an energy-draining, metabolism-killing, blood-sugar roller coaster and will sabotage your weight loss efforts. This would be the obvious source of sugars in processed and junk foods, but also grains as they do break down to simple sugars. Other grain-like products, like corn, pasta, rice and potatoes and fruit juices should also be avoided.
Food to fuel your metabolic fire
Feed your body a balanced range of wholesome, natural and nontoxic nutrients in the form of high-quality whole foods. Make vegetables the center of your diet. Include some fruit (preferably berries), and healthy fats, and high quality protein (fish, poultry, lean beef, eggs) in moderation as they suit you. Choose organic, free-range or wild-caught, locally raised and minimally processed foods whenever possible.
Your diet affects your biological age.
See my earlier Blog: “All Calories Are Not The Same”.
Avoid foods with toxic chemicals:
Pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones, highly processed sugars and trans fats pollute your body faster than it can clean itself. The thyroid slows your metabolic rate to allow your cells time to remove the sludge.
Hydration is critical.
Many Americans consume more caffeine-laden coffee and soft drinks than they do water. If you’re one of them, you might as well paste a sign on your forehead, ‘AGING AS FAST AS I CAN'”. Caffeine can act as a dehydration-promoting diuretic and even slight dehydration wreaks havoc on your metabolism.
Water Drinking Formula
1/2 of your weight in oz. of water
E.G. 1/2 of 140 lb = 70 oz water
PER DAY!!!!
2. Exercise
High-intensity exercise
The key is to push yourself. This delivers more “bang for the buck” than low or moderate-intensity workouts. Try a more intense class at the gym or include short bursts of jogging during your regular walk.
High intensity interval training is a potent anti-aging strategy regardless of your age.
Resistance work
Be sure to include weightlifting and body weight exercises that help you build sleek, powerful muscles increasing your body’s metabolic rate. Pound for pound, muscle burns more calories than fat.
Don’t forget cardio.
Cardio’s heart-health benefits are too good to ignore.
Bottom line
Frequently changing and upgrading your fitness routine keeps your body constantly adapting.
Any exercise is better than no exercise. Any movement increases your metabolic rate by stimulating muscles and burning calories; even activities like house cleaning or gardening make a difference. Sit too long, and all your body’s systems slow to a crawl. A sedentary lifestyle also contributes to ill health and depression, which further reduce your energy and make moving even less appealing.
3. Lifestyle
Sleep is a foundational health factor
Sleep is a peak time for growth and repair. When you skimp on shuteye, you make yourself vulnerable to a suppressed metabolism.
Lack of rest or disruption of normal sleep patterns can increase hunger, leading to obesity-related illnesses and accelerated aging.
De-stress
Stress devastates metabolism and zaps vitality.
Your body, perceiving that it is under attack, shuts down the systems (such as digestion, muscle building and repair) on which healthy metabolism depends. It starts storing up fat for safekeeping, and it begins robbing the stores of bone and muscle tissue that you’ve worked so hard to build.
Stress also tends to encourage metabolism-busting behaviors (like overeating, drinking and skipping workouts) and to dissuade us from metabolism-building ones (like adequate sleep, exercise and good nutrition) that might normally help ameliorate its negative effects.
Slow down the Aging Process
Aging is Mother Nature’s metabolic buster. Many metabolism-affecting hormones decrease with age. People lose 3 to 6 %of their muscle mass per decade after age 60, but it can start as early as age 40.
Do you want to:
- Reverse Metabolic Decline (aka AGING)?
- Do you need help using all the metabolism-boosting tools to optimize your energy and vitality?
- Do you want a healthy metabolism but are having struggles living a healthy lifestyle?
- Do you find yourself frequenting Starbucks to often?
- Do you want to improve your health and feel great?
There are few, if any, shortcuts.
I can help you look and feel younger with a body that will keep going for the LONG Haul.
Sign Up For a Free Vitality Acceleration Session.