Real Life Fitness Questions Answered

What can I do to speed up my metabolism?

Hi, What can I do to speed up my metabolism? Thanks

Our expert says...

Hi,

The following is from an article called ‘’ which can be found on the resources page of the website and should answer your question:

The speed of your basic metabolic rate (the speed at which they burn calories while resting) can vary according to factors such weight, level of fitness, muscle mass and even your genetic makeup. If you have a slow metabolism you may feel sluggish and low on energy, and find it harder to lose weight. However, there are ways to speed up your metabolism, the most effective being to do more exercise.

Our body uses up calories all the time, even when we are at resting. But when you exercise the extra exertion causes your metabolism to speed up, thus burning more calories. Your metabolism will even carry on working at a higher speed in the hour or so after you have stopped exercising.

Even more importantly, exercise builds muscle mass, and muscle tissue burns many more calories than fat tissue. This will give you a higher basic metabolic rate and make it easier to lose weight. This is one of the reasons why exercise is such a good way of kick starting weight loss if you've hit a bit of a dieting plateau. Vary your training schedule by including resistance training and high intensity cardio activity in order to stop your body from becoming too accustomed to one regime.

Although exercise is undoubtedly the best way to boost your metabolism, there are a few other tricks to help improve it. These include:

- Eating small meals and snacks at regular intervals. Consuming small amounts of food at regular intervals keeps your metabolism ticking over all day.

- Always eating breakfast. This is the most important meal of the day as it kicks starts your metabolism and gets your body burning calories. Missing out on breakfast encourages your body to store fat.

 - Drinking cold water. As well as increasing your basic metabolic rate this helps remove toxins from the body.

Hope this helps,

Kelly