We all have the friend that can eat a whole carton of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and not gain a pound, but the spoonful we put into our mouth goes straight to our love handles, thighs, hips or all the above. What it all comes back to is our metabolism. “The process of metabolism establishes the rate at which we burn our calories and, ultimately, how quickly we gain weight or how easily we lose it,” says Robert Yanagisawa, MD, director of the Medically Supervised Weight Management Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. The way in which we treat our bodies can
affect our metabolism. Yes, it has to do with genes but there are easy ways to speed up our metabolism so that we can be a part of the healthy body we long for. Here are 6 tips we have to make sure that you stay healthy, happy and feeling good about your body.
1) Eat breakfast
You’ve heard it from your mother, your father, your doctor, your teacher, and now we’re here to tell you again just how important breakfast is to your day – and your metabolism. Giving you energy for the day allows your body to recognize where it can spend energy and so on. After sleeping for hours your body lowers your metabolism when it doesn’t get food, so it’s easy to say eating in the morning is the best thing!
2) Spice it up:
Spicy food is not only a tasty but it can help you with your metabolism as well. Spicy foods have chemical compounds help boost your metabolism and speed up the rate of burning fat. Eating a dish with red or green chilies, or adding cayenne pepper are little steps that you can take to make your metabolism bump itself up.
3) Pack on Protein:
Research shows that eating protein is a great way to burn a couple hundred calories off your daily count. Because the proteins we eat have high amino acids that are harder to break down our body has more trouble burning them and therefore spends more calories doing so.
4) Snack Seriously:
It seems weird, but snacking all day can actually help you lose weight! This means eating smaller meals during the day rather than larger meals that are spread out. By eating smaller meals we leave out the option of binge eating, we keep our metabolism going and we create less opportunities to lapse between meals. The snacks you eat between the day should be things like cheese, foods with high protein, bananas, carrots or an apple. Keep em’ light and simple.
5) Lift Weights:
Weight training helps boost your metabolism and can even do so when we sleep! As we get older our metabolism tends to drop but weight training can change this! You need as little 15 minute circuits to get the ball rolling. To make sure you’re in even better shape try interval training – including high intensity workouts so that you work your body harder and more often.
6) Drink Green Tea:
Drinking green tea can be a powerful tool for weight loss and a way to boost metabolism. “Green tea has thermogenic properties and promotes fat oxidation beyond that explained by its caffeine content per se,” says Abdul G. Dulloo, a researcher at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and lead author of the study published in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Thermogenesis is the calories the body burns while digesting and absorbing food as it’s being eaten.