Metabolism is the chemical reaction in the body cells, changing the foods we eat into energy. Your body needs energy or fuel to do everything, including growing, thinking, breathing, circulating blood, digesting food, and repairing damaged cells, tissues & speed up metabolism.
However, metabolism can also refer to the number of calories your body burns when resting or the basal metabolic rate. A high metabolic rate means your body burns more calories. Your age, body composition, diet, size, health status, sex, medicines, and physical activity can affect your metabolism. This blog post highlights 15 quick ways to speed up metabolism.
Engage in High-Intensity Workout
A high-intensity workout involves intense and quick activity bursts. This exercise speeds up metabolism since it triggers your muscles to burn calories and produce energy. Therefore, go running or biking to speed up your metabolism.
Engage in Heavy Lifting
Metabolically, muscles are more active than fats. Heavy lifting builds the muscles, speeding up and increasing your metabolism. Thus, you’ll burn more calories when you engage in heavy lifting, even when resting, since more body muscles lead to a higher metabolism.
Eat More Protein
Protein can temporarily speed up and increase metabolism. This nutrient causes a thermic effect, which arises from the body’s requirement for extra calories to digest, process, and absorb nutrients from the meal. Protein has the highest thermic effect and reduces the metabolic drop that arises from fat loss. That’s because protein prevents muscle loss, a prevalent diet side effect.
Drink Adequate Water
Drinking up to 12 glasses of clean water can boost your metabolism. Water can help your body burn more calories daily, which is vital when losing weight.
Eat Slowly
Research has shown that slow eating increases the calories the body burns during digestion. Thus, you can speed up your metabolism and burn ten more calories from any 300-calorie meal.
Spend More Time Standing or Walking
Your body burns fewer calories when you sit for an extended period. And this can negatively impact your health. On the other hand, your metabolism improves when you step out of your desk and walk. Thus, standing or walking can speed up your metabolism.
Drink Oolong or Green Tea
Drinking oolong or green tea can affect the gut microbiome, influencing how the body breaks down excess fats. Therefore, drinking these teas more often might speed up your metabolism and help you lose excessive body weight.
Add Mustard to Your Food
Whether eating fish or steak, adding a teaspoon of hot mustard will speed up your metabolism. You will get up to 25% metabolic boost several hours after adding mustard to your food.
Substitute Food with Nuts
Do you have excess weight because you can’t withstand your hunger pangs? If so, keep healthy nuts nearby. For instance, ensure you have cashews, almonds, and walnuts in your handbag and consume them whenever you have challenges resisting the urge to binge. Besides being excellent magnesium sources, these nuts can speed up metabolism.
Spend More Time in the Sun
Spending time indoors stimulates physiological functions like sleeping and gaining weight. However, sunshine exposure gives your metabolism a much-needed boost. So, spend more time in the sun to speed up your metabolism.
Eat Chocolate
Chocolate with at least 70% cacao can synthesize fatty acids, reducing fat digestion and absorption. Also, this chocolate has catechin, an antioxidant, and caffeine, which boost metabolism.
Practice “Contrast” Showers
Contrast showers involve showering with warm water for 2-3 minutes before switching to cool water temperature for 30-45 seconds. This practice relaxes and contracts blood vessels, affecting the circulatory system, increasing metabolism, and improving energy supply.
Add Hot Peppers to Your Food
Experts have linked hot peppers to obesity reduction and related disorders since they enhance fat oxidation and energy expenditure by boosting metabolism. For instance, cayenne pepper improves blood circulation, digestion, and energy levels.
Cook with Virgin Coconut Oil
Virgin coconut oil has medium fatty acids, which the body digests quickly and absorbs for energy production. Thus, the body doesn’t store medium-chain fatty acids. However, vegetable cooking oils have polyunsaturated fatty acids with longer chains, which require liver enzymes to digest. Thus, you’ll speed up your metabolism by cooking with virgin coconut oil instead of vegetable oils.
Eat Garlic
Garlic is a metabolism-boosting, fat-burning, and nutrition powerhouse. Besides speeding up your metabolism, garlic helps curb cravings, especially for unhealthy foods.
Regardless of the reasons for speeding up your metabolism, these methods can help you do it faster. Please try them, but talk to your doctor first, especially if you’re dealing with an underlying medical condition or taking some medications.
