Kire Stojkovski M.D., Daniel Boyer M.D.
Miami Herald
If you’ve ever felt like you gain weight just by looking at a cake, you’re not alone. Many people have a slow metabolism, which can lead to problems with their weight.
The good news is that there are plenty of solutions if you are looking at how to speed up metabolism. Here we look at what your metabolism is, how metabolism differs for men and women, and what speeds up your metabolism.
What Is Your Metabolism?
Your metabolism is the process when your body converts calories into energy to function and keep you alive. The faster your metabolism, the more calories you need to eat.
Several things make up your overall metabolism:
- Your basal metabolic rate
- Your resting metabolic rate
- The thermic effect of food
- The thermic effect of exercise
- Non-exercise activity thermogenesis
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
Your basal metabolic rate is the minimum amount of calories your body needs to function. This covers what you would need to lay in bed all day. It enables your heart to function, allows you to breathe and digest food, and enables your muscles to work correctly.
People that have a low basal metabolic rate often have low muscle mass or have had overly restrictive diets for a period of time.
Lots of things affect your basal metabolic rate, including:
- The amount of muscle you have
- The amount of body fat you have
- Age
- Sex
- Dieting history
- Some health conditions
The good news is that if you are looking at how to speed up metabolism, you can do this by focusing on increasing your basal metabolic rate. Changing your diet and increasing the amount of resistance training you do in particular will benefit you.
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)
This is often confused with your basal metabolic rate but refers to the minimum amount of calories you need to stay alive while resting. It includes the number of calories burned by eating and going to the bathroom, whereas basal metabolic rate doesn’t.
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)
This is the number of calories that your body burns by processing and digesting food. It can account for up to 10 percent of your energy expenditure and can be increased by changing some foods in your diet [1].
Thermic Effect of Exercise (TEE)
This is the increase in the amount of calories you burn when you exercise. The intensity of your workout will depend on how much your metabolism increases.
The increase can last for many hours after you train, even when you are resting, which is why exercise is one of the main ways to boost your metabolism.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
Non-exercise activity thermogenesis is the amount of calories you burn for things you do during that day that don’t involve exercise. This could be walking around, fidgeting, or doing housework, among other things.
What Speeds Up Your Metabolism?
Contrary to popular belief, we aren’t born with a slow metabolism. Your metabolism is affected by things over time, such as lifestyle factors, body composition, age, and gender.
Your metabolism also changes depending on how you exercise, how active you are, and how you eat. You can consider these things when looking at what speeds up your metabolism.
How Does Your Metabolism Affect Your Health?
Ensuring you have a healthy metabolism is essential because it can impact your overall health.
People with a lower metabolism are more likely to have issues with their weight and body fat levels over time, putting them more at risk of certain illnesses, especially cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes.
Focusing on how to speed up metabolism can lead to a positive change in your overall health, as well as help you to maintain a healthy weight.
Is Metabolism Different for Men and Women?
Yes. Men and women usually have different metabolic rates. This is primarily due to the amount of muscle mass that men have.
Because muscle is the most metabolically active tissue in the body, the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is and the more calories you need to consume.
A man’s metabolism works around 10 to 15 percent faster than a woman’s metabolism, which is why men often lose weight easier than women.
How to Speed Up Metabolism: 9 Things You Need to Know
If you are wondering how to speed up your metabolism, there are some easy ways that can make a difference. Exercising and eating a healthy diet are the most significant changes you can make to help.
Here are the top nine things to focus on when considering how to speed up metabolism.
Eat More Protein
The type of food you eat can affect your metabolism. Processing, digesting, and absorbing the nutrients in your food takes energy, so your metabolism increases for several hours after eating.
Eating protein causes the most significant rise in the thermic effect of food. Between 20 and 30 percent of the energy within the protein is used to break the food down, compared to five to 10 percent with carbs and fats. Eating protein with each of your meals can increase your metabolism substantially [2].
Eating enough protein and enough calories overall also prevents muscle loss, which is a common side effect of dieting and aging [3].
Don’t Skip Meals
It might sound strange, but skipping meals is one of the worst things that you can do if you are looking at how to speed up metabolism.
When you eat, your body burns more calories, processing and digesting the food and absorbing the nutrients. If you are eating enough protein in each meal, the amount of calories that you burn is boosted even more because of the increased thermic effect.
Going for long periods of time without eating is particularly bad because your body becomes catabolic, meaning that you start to break down your muscle for energy. If you let this happen too often, your metabolism will slow down even more.
Ensure You Are Properly Hydrated
Drinking more water not only helps to keep you full, but it is also a key way to speed up metabolism [4]. Drinking as little as 500 ml of water can increase your resting metabolic rate by around 30% for at least an hour [5].
Ensuring that you are properly hydrated can also help you to manage your appetite so that you eat less and reduce the number of calories you consume [6]. Replacing sugary drinks with water also reduces your calorie intake and keeps your blood sugar levels more stable, so you can lose weight more quickly.
Incorporate More Exercise, Particularly Weight Training
Exercise is one of the easiest things that you can do if you are looking at how to speed up metabolism. Not only does it burn calories when you are doing your workout, it also increases the number of calories burned for around 24 hours after you have finished exercising [7].
What speeds up metabolism? There are two types of exercise that you should focus on:
- High-intensity interval training (HIIT)
- Resistance training/weight training
HIIT involves quick, intense bursts of exercise that increases your metabolism and encourages your body to burn body fat, whereas resistance training helps build and retain muscle mass.
Building muscle is one of the most effective ways to speed up metabolism because muscle is more metabolically active than body fat. The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism [8].
Drink More Coffee
Caffeine can boost your metabolism temporarily and help you burn more body fat. It’s believed to increase thermogenesis, which is the dissipation of energy through heat production in the body. Natural metabolism boosters such as PhenQ contain caffeine for this purpose.
Drinking a cup of coffee increases your metabolism for around three hoursafter consuming it, allowing you to burn more calories [9].
Drinking green tea or oolong tea also produces similar effects to drinking coffee. Green tea and oolong tea are great ways to speed up metabolism as they convert fat in your body into free fatty acids, which enables more fat to be burned during exercise.
Improve Your Sleep
If you are looking at how to speed up metabolism, consider how much time you spend asleep. Inadequate sleep can have a significant effect on your metabolism [10]. It can increase your hunger, blood sugar levels, and insulin resistance and decrease your ability to make good decisions. These things can make you more at risk for health conditions like obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Ensuring that you get between seven and nine hours of quality sleep improves the way your body processes sugar, your appetite hormones function, and the number of calories you burn. Sufficient sleep is also one of the best answers for how to speed up metabolism in the body.
Eat More Spices
Spicy food is often overlooked when considering how to speed up metabolism. Chili peppers, in particular, contain capsaicin, which increases thermogenesis and enables you to burn more calories [11].
It’s thought that eating spices causes an increase in the amount of oxygen that you consume, raising body temperature. This leads to an increase in the number of calories that are used by your body as energy.
Although the amount of extra calories burned off is small, including this alongside the additional strategies we have set out plays a key role in how to speed up metabolism.
Take a Metabolism Booster Supplement
Natural supplements are an excellent option when considering how to speed up metabolism. Metabolism booster supplements could offer you some extra help with losing weight if you select the right one.
While many pills out there promise fast weight loss, metabolism booster supplements contain ingredients that may make a difference if you take them alongside changes to your diet and lifestyle.
What speeds up your metabolism? Key supplements to consider:
Supplements like PhenQ, Instant Knockout, and Leanbean all contain evidence-based ingredients that aim to help you lose weight, burn body fat, and increase your energy and motivation. These supplements contain thermogenic ingredients to boost your metabolism, alongside ingredients like glucomannan to reduce your appetite.
Stand Up More
Standing up more throughout the day can lower your risk of certain illnesses and is a good strategy when deciding how to speed up metabolism.
Standing up uses more energy than sitting down and therefore burns more calories. While it doesn’t seem like much, over time, it can lead to a considerable difference. You could try standing up more at work or taking more breaks to walk around to enhance your weight loss efforts.
FAQs
Understanding your metabolism and how it works can be confusing. Trying to figure out whether you have a slow metabolism and how to speed up metabolism can be a minefield.
Here are some of the most common questions and answers that we see on how to speed up metabolism, which may help you.
How Does Dieting Affect Your Metabolism?
Dieting can affect your metabolism, but this depends on how you diet. Reducing calorie intake dramatically or over-restricting yourself can have a detrimental effect, especially if you eat less than your basal metabolic rate.
One of the key ways to speed up metabolism is to lower calories gradually and eat a balanced diet, rather than skipping meals.
Ensure that you include high protein levels throughout the day and more resistance training to stop you from losing muscle while you diet.
How to Speed Up Metabolism: What Foods Speed up Your Metabolism?
Eating a healthy diet with adequate amounts of protein spread throughout the dayis one of the most effective ways to speed up metabolism. Eating protein speeds up metabolism by 20 to 30 percent.
Spicy foods are another great addition to your diet to burn fat and increase metabolism. Ensuring that you drink enough water and doing HIIT training and resistance training will make your metabolism stronger, as will getting enough sleep.
Can You Reset Your Metabolism?
No. Your metabolism can’t be reset. However, if you are wondering how to speed up metabolism, there are many ways to do this.
Concentrating on eating healthily with plenty of protein, increasing exercise, eating spicy food, and increasing the amount of sleep you get are all ways to speed up metabolism.
Can Your Metabolism Become Faster?
Yes, it certainly can. Speeding up your metabolism should be looked at as a long-term goal. While you can increase your metabolism by eating healthily and exercising, you need to incorporate these into your day-to-day life to experience the full effects.
Small changes that are done consistently can add up to big changes, improving your long-term health. More importantly, consistency means that you are less likely to have to consider how to speed up metabolism in the future.
What Speeds Up Your Metabolism?
Your metabolism is affected by how you live your life, how active you are, what exercise you do, and how you eat. When considering ways to make changes, it is essential to factor in what speeds up your metabolism to get the most out of what you do.
The most significant impacts on metabolism are eating adequate protein, weight training, getting enough sleep, and drinking plenty of water.
Do Changes to Your Metabolism Last?
Yes, if you make lasting changes to your diet and lifestyle, the speed of your metabolism can improve and last long term. However, you need to be consistent with your eating habits and exercise routine in particular to get lasting results.
Eating a nutrient-dense diet, getting enough sleep, drinking plenty of water, and exercising regularly are key things to build into your daily routine when looking at how to speed up metabolism.
Conclusion: How to Speed up Your Metabolism
Your metabolism plays a central role in your overall health. Having a healthy metabolism helps to protect you from obesity and type 2 diabetes.
When concentrating on how to speed up metabolism, you should eat healthily while including adequate protein, and follow a good exercise routine. While men and women have different levels of muscle mass and, therefore, different rates of metabolism, similar approaches are used when considering how to increase metabolism.
In order to keep your metabolism working as well as possible, it is essential to make lasting changes to your diet and lifestyle. Eating spicy food, drinking more water, exercising, and getting adequate sleep will help make positive changes and speed up metabolism.
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