When you try to lose weight by eating less calories, your body will naturally begin to shift towards “starvation mode”. It thinks that your are actually starving, so it reduces your metabolism in order to conserve energy. This is why most people who try to lose weight by simply eating less food will often fail. Calorie shifting diets are meant to trick your system into raising it’s metabolism naturally by eating several meals per day, each of different caloric value.

For example, you could eat one two small meals, follow those with a larger meal and end the day with another small meal. Your body will never reach the starvation point. Since there is always food in your stomach, your body will constantly be working on the process of digestion and need to have it’s metabolism as high as possible in order to keep this vital process going.

Creating a menu and sticking to it is important for calorie shifting to be successful. Snacking should be avoided at all costs. Try to eat at least four times per day and make sure you eat different amounts of calories each time. Also make sure to keep your menu fairly healthy with grains, fruits and vegetables.

Now days a new technique of reducing weight has been discovered that is through increased rate of metabolism. Yes, just by increasing your metabolism rate you can actually shed those extra pounds that keep hovering on you day and night. Since increasing your rate of metabolism can be so advantageous to you then why don’t you learn how to increase your metabolism rate? This will obviously prove beneficial to you because you will not only get into shape but will also become much healthier.

The best way to shoot up your metabolism rate is to do more physical activity. Physical activity can increase your metabolism rate to many folds. Another thing which is important is to avoid consuming pills for enhancing your metabolism rate. Prefer natural methods for boosting up your metabolism rate rather than going for pills and drugs. You will surely observe some great benefits in your body when your metabolism rate will increase. Losing extra weight is one of them. Most of people who try increasing their metabolism rate do so because they want to get rid of their extra pounds.

Since the beginning of time, people have expanded the powers of food beyond simply meeting nutritional and energy needs. The belief that specific foods can cure health problems is a longstanding cultural tradition: eating chicken soup to cure a cold and oysters to enhance fertility are just two examples.We really want to believe in the power of foods. It is not surprising that specific foods and eating regimens have made their way into the folklore of weight loss.With great optimism, people embrace the latest new food or way of eating with the hope that it will put them on the path to sustained weight loss.

The magic of a single solution for weight loss focuses on just one aspect of a food, supplement, or activity.This is similar to the tale about the three blind men and the elephant: Three blind men are asked to describe an elephant. One of them touches the trunk, another touches the tail, and the third touches the foot. Each of the blind men accurately describes what he touched, but none of them can describe the elephant because the animal is bigger than a single body part.

Weight-loss myths are similar in that they isolate a particular feature that may be true and offer it as a solution to the entire problem of weight loss. It is possible to find at least one study to prove that each of the weight-loss boosters below does lead to superior weight loss. Often the one study that is publicized on television or read about in a magazine is the only study that shows results, but it is easy to believe the story because the study results are true, even if only just once.

But rigorous science requires a study to be replicated by other scientists and for them to observe the same results. Few of us have the inclination to track down all the research studies on a topic in order to find out if there is general agreement about the pool of scientific evidence on a specific weight-loss booster.We have done so for you. When the scientific community makes its judgment on a particular issue, it is based on all of the evidence, not just on one or a few isolated studies.

Building more muscle mass does increase metabolism. Because muscle is the engine that drives the body, it burns more calories than fat, so activities that speed up metabolism can boost calorie burning and weight loss.

Is it possible to lose weight on diets that promise to speed up metabolism? Probably not. If you do lose weight, it is not due to a faster metabolism. Read on to discover that the secret to weight loss is calories and that the weight loss achieved through a metabolism boosting diet is also due to calories.

The Whole Truth

It’s All about Calories

Body weight reflects the balance between calories in and calories out. The food we eat supplies calories. Our body burns calories three ways: through resting metabolism, the calories burned as the body keeps itself running 24/7; during physical activity; and in digesting and absorbing food. A steady body weight means a balance between food and calorie burning. Gaining or losing weight is the sign of an imbalance.

Calories and Weight
Calories in greater than calories out = Weight gain
Calories in equal to calories out  = Steady weight
Calories in less than calories out  = Weight loss

The only scientifically proven method for losing weight involves the creation of a caloric imbalance. At the end of the day, the only true way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories in food and/or burn more calories. This has been shown time and time again in decades of rigorous scientific studies. One example of the hundreds that exist was done in Switzerland. Fifty-four obese people had their calories restricted to 1,100 per day. Different combinations of foods and meal timing were tested.There was no difference in weight losses; only the calories made a difference.

A Faster Metabolism Burns More

It takes a shortfall of about 500 calories a day to lose 1 pound per week and 1,000 calories a day to lose 2 pounds weekly. The most effective method to create this shortfall is to cut calories from food and also to boost metabolism. But despite the promises of so many popular diets and products, metabolism can be boosted in only a couple of ways: exercising more and speeding up heart rate.

One of the chief benefits of exercise is that it revs up metabolism. The reason is simple. Individuals who exercise on a consistent basis maintain high levels of lean muscle tissue throughout their lifetime. They also build new muscle. Lean muscle tissue sustains high levels of metabolism. In fact, lean muscle tissue burns seventy times as many calories as fat does. Exercise burns calories, and longer periods of exercise mean greater calorie burning.

While it is true that an increase in lean muscle mass increases metabolism because muscles burn a lot of calories, weight loss almost always results in some loss of muscle mass. The muscles have less weight to carry around, so less muscle is needed. People who follow extreme diets to get a fast weight loss can significantly reduce their lean muscle tissue and thereby slow their metabolism.

A popular theory widely reported in the media is that exercise increases metabolism during activity and for a period of time after the activity is completed. Unfortunately, studies that have researched this concept do not have consistent results. In general, studies on humans suggest that metabolism increases when the amount of body muscle increases but that the number of extra calories burned after exercise is relatively small. And no studies have directly linked the aftereffects of exercise with significant weight loss. It’s the calories expended doing the exercise that boost weight loss, not the aftereffects of exercise on metabolism.

The second way to increase metabolism is to increase heart rate. The heart and other organs contribute to the resting metabolic rate—the calories the body burns just to keep itself going. In a controlled study that looked at the effects of amphetamines on weight loss, the stimulants caused greater weight loss. Heart rate and blood pressure went up and food intake went down, a side effect of feeling hyper and too nervous to eat. Many weight-loss supplements contain chemical or herbal stimulants, including caffeine, guarana, and the now-banned ephedra, which speed up metabolism by pumping up the heart rate. Most of the supplements and over-the-counter products that are marketed to promote weight loss contain stimulants, albeit at a lesser strength than that found in prescription amphetamines. Like their more potent cousin, these compounds are marketed as “fat-burning” and cause weight loss by increasing your heart rate and blood pressure and decreasing your appetite.

These stimulants can work, but they do so at a cost to the body. Negative side effects include insomnia, nervousness, anxiety, and in extreme cases, death. Increasingly, some of these products (including the ones that were most effective, like phenylpropanolamine and ephedra) have been banned because of the negative side effects.

A careful look at the ingredient list of many herbal remedies reveals the truth—herbal diuretics that cause the body to lose fluid through urination and herbal laxatives. Just because the package says the product is natural or herbal does not mean it is healthy. A combination of stimulants, diuretics, and laxatives does not add up to a safe and sensible way to lose weight.

Over the years, other foods and products have been falsely promoted as metabolism boosters for weight loss. Grapefruit, for example, was said to have compounds that speed up metabolism; an added promise was that eating and digesting grapefruit actually uses up more calories than are in the grapefruit. Celery is often promoted as a food that burns more calories than it supplies. But there is no scientific proof that calories spent digesting and absorbing can be pumped up by eating particular foods.

The Source of Calories Does Not Affect Your Weight Loss

Which is best for weight loss—a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein, or a diet balanced in carbohydrates, protein, and fat? That’s been a question that has received a lot of scientific attention, and science is showing a firm conclusion—it does not matter. According to dozens of research studies, no particular type of diet speeds up metabolism more than another. In 2004, a complete review of all research studies on the topic concluded that following a low-carbohydrate and/or high-protein diet did not affect the rate of metabolism. Diets with differing proportions of macronutrients work because they reduce calories, albeit in disguise.They have no special effects on metabolism.

Eat More, Lose Weight?

Diets that promise more food for greater weight loss are usually variations on very low-fat diets. Because they focus on naturally low-fat, low-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables, they supply a greater volume of food for fewer calories.The foods are also ones that are thought of as harder to digest, suggesting that they burn more calories during digestion. However, as with other types of diets, very low-fat diets work because they are lower in calories. They do not speed up metabolism and do not require digestion to go into overdrive.

No Food or Food Combination Burns Body Fat

The term thermogenesis, or calorie burning, became very popular in the mid-1990s when a popular weight-loss book suggested that certain foods caused the body to burn extra energy in order to digest and absorb them. The concept of thermogenesis is based on science, but the relative contribution of this extra energy burning is so minor that it
is irrelevant for weight loss.

“Fat-burning” foods do not burn fat. Highly acidic foods like grapefruit, lemon juice, and vinegar are said to melt away fat because they are so acidic. This explanation sounds logical but does not work in real life. Certain food combinations are said to create chemical reactions in the body that promote loss of body fat.This promise cannot be proven, and these foods do not boost metabolism.

Some foods like caffeine-containing beverages and capsaicin containing chile peppers have been linked with a boost in calorie burning. Caffeine is a mild stimulant, and high dosages of caffeine raise the heart rate. Chile peppers cause the body to sweat and to feel stimulated. In one study, capsaicin did cause increased fat burning in a group of people who had lost weight, but it did not help them maintain their weight loss. Results were similar for green tea, a beverage that contains caffeine and other components reported to boost metabolism. When put into rigorous studies, neither demonstrated a significant effect on weight loss.

Eating Patterns Do Not Make a Difference

Eating three times daily or six times daily? Having a small breakfast and big dinner or big breakfast and small dinner? Which is best for burning calories? Again, it does not matter. As long as calories remain the same, meal sizes relative to each other do not affect weight loss. A series of well-controlled experiments that looked at the effect of meal timing on metabolism was conducted in a clinical research center at a university. Regardless of the meal timing—eating once a day or several times a day, eating at night or in the morning—weight loss stayed the same when study subjects ate the same number of calories. The researchers concluded that the body’s regulatory systems are extremely fine-tuned.

So if meal timing does not change metabolism, how does meal timing work? It promotes weight loss by throwing off normal eating routines in a way that leads to eating fewer calories. Say that you are told to eat only fruit before noon. If you are a breakfast eater, then not being able to eat cereal, toast, a sausage biscuit, or your usual breakfast foods automatically cuts calories. There is nothing metabolically magical about eating only fruit in the morning. The same is true if you tend to snack in the evening and go on a “metabolism-boosting” diet that prohibits eating after 7:00 P.M.

That said, meal timing is important because eating plans have to be livable and adaptable to our different lifestyles.Work schedule, family structure, exercise routine, and numerous other factors help determine the best eating schedule. Say a person works the night shift and sleeps during the day. She may want to eat dinner with her family even though that meal is really breakfast for her, then eat lunch in the middle of her work shift and a small breakfast with her family before going to sleep. A person who works full-time and exercises daily after work may want to eat breakfast, lunch, then two mini-meals, one midafternoon before exercise and one at night after exercise. No one schedule is better than another.

You may have heard how important it is to eat breakfast. It is true that numerous studies have shown that people who eat breakfast are much less likely to gain weight than those who do not eat breakfast. Eating breakfast provides essential nutrients, sets the body up with energy for the day, and is linked with less eating later in the day. The effect is not on metabolism; it is on lifestyle and habits.

Some weight-loss proponents recommend eating a bigger breakfast, followed by a smaller lunch and an even smaller dinner. The theory is that the majority of calories are eaten toward the beginning of the day when the body needs them most. This approach works in theory but has not undergone the rigorous studies needed to prove or disprove its impact on sustained weight loss. It is also not practical for most people.

Restrictive Diets Reduce Calories

As with diets that throw off eating routines by changing meal timing, a diet that imposes almost any type of restriction will reduce calories by forcing a change in habits. Whether it’s avoiding gluten and dairy, not eating a protein food and a starch within four hours of each other, consuming bowls of cabbage soup, or only eating fruit before noon, following rules that restrict the type of food eaten, the time of day food is eaten, or how frequently a food or food type is eaten will reduce caloric intake.

Let’s look more closely at the concept of separating different types of foods. Say that a diet is based on avoiding eating starches and protein foods together in a meal, a basic premise of a popular diet in the 1990s. That means no cereal (starch) and milk (protein) or toast (starch) and egg (protein) at breakfast, no sandwich at lunch because starchy bread typically is combined with a protein food, and no potato, rice, pasta, or bread (all starches) with meat, chicken, or fish (all proteins) at dinner. Imagine how much less you would eat if you were told to avoid traditional food combinations!

What about eating three standard-size meals and no snacks versus eating six or even eight mini-meals? The end result depends on the routine that is being changed and the total amount of food eaten. A frequent snacker might eat less food on a three-meal no-snack diet and lose weight. The mini-meal eater could lose weight as long as the calories in the mini-meals added up to less than he or she was eating before. The science in this area is inconsistent. Some research says that eating fewer, bigger meals allows the body to burn a few more calories digesting and absorbing foods. But there is no strong research showing that meal frequency and size affects weight loss as long as calories are the same.

The Placebo Effect Works

For every one of the myths and gimmicks about foods, supplements, and food timing and combining discussed in this article, there are a dozen more being promoted. These myths are so prevalent because each has a kernel of truth—a small part of the myth based on science. It is the fantastic story that gets wrapped up with the truth that creates a myth rather than a valid, long-lasting way to lose weight.

The placebo effect happens when a person believes that there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between two things even if it does not exist. Because the person believes in the relationship, however, his or her behavior changes in a way that produces the anticipated effect.

Rigorous scientific studies include a placebo group and a group that is actually getting the treatment. This is the only valid way to ensure that it is the treatment and not the placebo that is producing the effect. Many promising treatments in the area of weight loss lose their luster when they are evaluated in a rigorous scientific study that includes a placebo group. For example, acupuncture is often touted as a weightloss treatment. When tested against a placebo, however, it has been shown to be ineffective.The same has been shown for subliminal tapes to induce weight loss.

It’s about Behavior Change, Not Metabolism

Ultimately, behavior changes that support eating fewer calories and being more active lead to weight loss. Despite this reality, only one-third of Americans trying to lose weight use the strategy that is the fundamental foundation of weight loss. Sustainable weight loss does not result from a revved-up metabolism or the unique properties of specific foods. However, particular eating behaviors and patterns, such as meal frequency, meal timing, or following a specific dietary pattern, and nutritional factors, like the energy density of food and the amount of fiber, may affect caloric intake and thus weight loss.

Here is an example of a suggested behavior change that works, even though the premise for the change has nothing to do with a metabolism. Many programs will tell you that you should not eat after 7:00 P.M. because “food eaten in the evening turns to fat.” The truth is that any food turns to fat if calories in are greater than calories out. The time of day that it is eaten does not matter. However, many people consume a large portion of their daily calories in the evening. Television viewing, an evening activity for many, is also associated with increased caloric intake and “mindless” snacking. A dietary regimen that restricts evening eating works because it limits calories. That, in turn, helps burn fat.

The Bottom Line

The famous baby doctor Benjamin Spock was known for telling young mothers,“Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.” The same holds true for weight loss. There is no reason to feel bad if you have tried the diets and products that promise a metabolism-inspired weight loss. Everybody wants to believe in the promise, and the pseudoscience that goes along with many of the claims seems to make a lot of sense. But when it comes to achieving weight loss that lasts, a combination of instinct and a complete disclosure of the pool of scientific studies is the way to figure out what is real and what is a myth.

It is much more important to find an eating style and exercise routine that suits your life and that you can stay with over time than trying to follow an uncomfortable or overly restricted regimen in the hopes of boosting your metabolism. Ultimately, it is livable changes to your lifestyle that will make the big difference and help you lose the weight and keep it off.

Losing weight and sustaining weight loss are not the same for everyone. Each of us is unique.We are born with our own genetic makeup, we make life choices (for example, to smoke, to have children), and we develop a personal biology that affects our ability to achieve lasting weight loss. Although there are individual factors that make weight loss more or less of a challenge, each can be overcome with knowledge and the right tools.

MYTH: You can’t lose weight if you have the wrong metabolism or genes!

Some people can lose weight and keep it off, but others simply cannot. For them it is not even a remote possibility. There are many factors working against weight loss, so for many people longterm weight management is an unrealistic dream. Some folks are just big-boned, and big-boned people are destined to be big. Some have the wrong body shape for thinness—naturally big hips and thighs, a round stomach, or overly broad shoulders. Those with slow metabolisms just don’t burn a lot of calories. It’s especially frustrating for those people because they exercise and don’t eat a lot, maybe just a few hundred calories per day, but they can’t overcome their body’s slow engine.

Some people are born with fat genes. Their mom and dad are big, their grandparents are big, and their cousins are big. The people who come from “big” families have no choice about being big too. Then there are those life events that cause weight gain that can’t be reversed: stopping smoking, being pregnant, especially with a second or third child, and menopause. It’s impossible for women to combat the natural body changes that come with being female. The weight just piles on even though they’re not doing anything differently.

Just as there are people destined to be overweight, there are others who are naturally thin. If they gain a few pounds, they take them right off. Pounds just melt away as soon as they start eating less and exercising more. They are the lucky people. The unlucky ones cannot lose weight.

The Whole Truth

Body Shape
A body shaped like an apple accumulates extra weight around the abdomen. A pear-shaped body adds extra pounds in the hips and thighs.Traditional thinking has been that it is better to be a pear than an apple—people with an appleshaped body are at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and heart disease. Body shape, however, does not affect one’s ability to lose weight. Apples can lose weight just as quickly or slowly as pears.

Frame Size
Old ideal height and weight tables that were based on bone frame size: small frame, medium frame, and large frame. These tables were widely used, even though they were not based on good science.

Many people assumed that because they were large, they had a bone frame size classification that justified weighing more. The chart allowed people with big bones to be heavier than people with small bones. Today, some people believe that body mass index (BMI) does not apply to them because their extra weight is from their big bones or muscle, not from fat. The truth is that while people do have different frame sizes and it is possible to be overweight on the BMI chart because of extra muscle, most people who weigh too much for their height do so because of excess body fat.

That said, a few studies have been done on the relationship between bone frame size and BMI. What the studies found is that medium and large bone frames are closely related to their percent body fat and BMI—as the bone frame gets bigger, the percent of body fat and BMI both go up. Small bone frames, however, do not have less body fat.This finding helps explain why Asian-Americans, who tend to have smaller bone frames, have a higher disease risk at a lower BMI than people from other ethnic backgrounds. They may have a higher percentage of body fat even though their BMI may be in the normal range.

Genes
It seems logical that people from“big” families are destined to be overweight. Science has made great strides in understanding the very complicated issue of why some people are more predisposed to gain weight than others. Almost every week we see new studies published about various genetic components of weight gain and obesity.

A few years ago, there was tremendous interest in the discovery of leptin, a hormone thought to be the messenger sent from fat cells to the brain to regulate eating. Rats that did not produce leptin became obese just as people who do not produce insulin get type 1 diabetes. It was argued that people who were overweight or obese somehow had a genetic breakdown in this system and did not produce enough leptin. It was quickly discovered, however, that obese people tend to have higher levels of leptin than those who are thin, and the way leptin works in the body is much more complicated than being a matter of a simple deficiency. In fact, leptin functionality resembles the insulin resistance found in the metabolic syndrome that leads to type 2 diabetes. It seems that when fat cells send leptin through the bloodstream to the brain to tell the brain to stop eating because the body has plenty of fat, the brain somehow does not get the message and the individual keeps eating. It is as though the phone is ringing and no one is answering it!

Leptin seemed like a wonderful answer that might explain a genetic tendency toward obesity. Unfortunately, we now know that the body’s regulation of weight and body fat relies on more than just one messenger. It now looks as if there may be twenty, thirty, or even hundreds of different messengers that interact with each other.

This is not to say that genetics do not affect obesity. In fact, obesity researchers believe that there is a strong relationship between a person’s genetic makeup and his or her vulnerability to become overweight. But the human genome, or genetic map, changes excruciatingly slowly—probably less than 1% every one hundred thousand years. So how can we explain the fact that obesity rates have soared by 40% in the United States in the last decade? Certainly our genetic makeup has not changed.With the exception of the rare mutations that cause severe morbid obesity, it seems that numerous genes, each with modest effect, contribute to a person’s tendency to become overweight.The answer is that we are eating too much and burning off too little.

Many of us do have bodies that are genetically programmed to make us more vulnerable to gaining weight. But biology is not destiny. Weight gain only happens in an environment that leads to eating too much food and getting too little physical activity. For people who find the right balance between food and physical activity to maintain weight loss, having fat genes does not make a difference.

Foods contain just three major nutrients—protein, fat, and carbohydrates. It is not the total amount of food people eat that causes them to gain weight. Rather, one of those big nutrients is playing havoc with the body. The key to weight loss is to eliminate foods that contain the one nutrient that causes weight gain. These days, following this strategy is possible since specialized foods that have reduced or eliminated the weight-causing nutrient are so widely available.

Maybe fat is to blame. Fat in the diet is broken down into triglycerides that are taken in by body fat cells. Fat cells put triglycerides into storage and burn them very slowly and efficiently only after all other energy sources are used up. This works against weight loss. Eating fat also leads to heart attacks and cancer.

Maybe carbohydrates (carbs) are the macronutrient that causes weight gain. Carbs make us fat because they force the body to overproduce the hormone insulin, the metabolism cop in the energy in/energy out equation that rules body weight. To keep
blood sugar steady, insulin converts blood glucose from carbs into fat and pushes the fat into the fat cells. Insulin also prevents fat cells from releasing fat to be used for energy. Carbs make the body produce too much insulin, so blood sugar drops very fast. Since insulin will not let fat out to be used for energy, our brain tells us to eat more. If that food is a carb, the vicious cycle starts again. Eventually, the body becomes insulin resistant, and you gain weight. The answer is to eat very few carbohydrates. After cutting carbs, weight loss is quick and dramatic.

Maybe it is protein. After all, vegetarians avoid animal-based protein for overall health and long-term weight management.

It’s  helpful to note that eating frequently throughout the day can be very good for boosting metabolism. There are a couple of reasons for this.

The first reason is that people who tend to eat throughout the day do considerably less snacking. As a result, they tend to avoid the potato chips or candy bars that they might otherwise consume if they suddenly felt hungry.

People who eat throughout the day don’t tend to experience severe hunger pangs, because they don’t reach that stage.

The second reason, and the one that you can probably guess based on your understanding of metabolism, is that by eating throughout the day, you are constantly keeping your metabolism in motion.

It’s kind of like having a generator run all the time; it will simply use more electricity than if you powered it on 3 times a day.

Now, it goes without saying (but we should say it anyway just in case!) that just because it’s good for metabolism-boosting to eat frequently, this doesn’t mean that you can eat junk all day long!

Rather, if you choose to eat more frequently, then you’ll certainly need to be very aware of what you eat; because you can easily exceed your required amount of daily calories if you don’t keep an eye on this.

That’s why, if your plan is to follow the eat-more-to-burn-more approach, then you should keep a food journal that notes what you eat (and drink of course) throughout the day.

You should not merely know the calorie levels of what you eat, but you should know the overall nutritional values, too.

For example, if you’re on target to eat 50 grams of protein per day, then you want to make sure you reach this target and not exceed it (or come in below it).

In other words, merely focusing on calories is only half of the job. You will need to ensure that you’re eating enough protein, carbohydrates, fats (the good unsaturated kind!), and the other vitamins and minerals that your body needs in order to function at optimal levels.

Eat Early

We’ve all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And in terms of boosting your metabolism, this is indeed the case! There are a couple of reasons why eating a hearty and healthy breakfast can boost metabolism and lead to weight loss goals.

The first reason is that people who eat breakfast are much less inclined to snack throughout the morning. For example, if you had a good breakfast of fruit and low-sugar cereal in the morning, your chances of visiting the vending machine at work around 10:30am diminish significantly.

Of course, as you recall from our previous discussion on eating more frequently, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t eat something between breakfast and lunch.

It simply means that, since you won’t be extremely hungry at 10:30am (because you skipped breakfast), you’ll be less inclined to eat anything that you get your hands on; such as a nice donut that your co-worker was kind enough to offer you.

In other words, by starting your day in a nutritious way, you’ll have more control over what you eat throughout the day.

The second reason is more aligned with metabolism-boosting. Studies have shown that metabolism slows during sleep, and doesn’t typically get going again until you eat.

Therefore, starting the day with breakfast is like kick-starting your metabolism. You’ll actually burn more calories throughout the day, simply by eating breakfast (hey, who knew?!).

Remember: as you eat your breakfast, control both the portion and the contents. You don’t want to eat to the point of complete fullness; because, remember, you want to eat throughout the day and you won’t be able to do that if you’re stuffed.

At the same time, beware of high-fat breakfasts. Studies have shown that high-fat breakfasts, such as those that include bacon and sausage, not only deliver lots of calories (there are 9 calories for every gram of fat, as compared to 4 for every gram of carbohydrates and proteins, respectively).

But they also can make you very hungry again, very soon! So in addition to having ingested a lot of fat (and hence a lot of calories), you’ll typically find yourself rather ravenous again in a few hours.

Alternatively, breakfasts that are high in fiber take longer to digest, and thus, the body won’t be hungry again for a while.

This is something to bear in mind; and it may explain why many people who eat breakfast find themselves painfully hungry by lunchtime; it’s not their “overactive metabolism” at work; it’s the high fat content, which has been swiftly digested.

Eat these when you’re not on the diet.

Bread: Stick to high fiber types of bread i.e., whole grain, mixed grain, wheat, etc.

Potatoes: Keep the skin on. When eating baked potatoes, try finely chopped onion and garlic instead of sourcream or butter. Cut your potatoes into long wedges and add your favorite seasonings while cooking on medium heat in a non-stick pot. Brown all sides. Delicious!

Soup: Not just our Negative Calorie soup, but other kinds as well. Try including them into your daily meals. Have a bowl before each main dish. You’ll eat less. Add chicken, turkey, or different kinds of fish or seafood – you’ll be amazed!

Rice: Brown is better, but white is okay. Add vegetables or eat alone. Add lean beef, chicken, or fish. Try to include into your daily meals.

Beans: Black beans, pinto, kidney, red, etc. Mix, or eat separately. Try using different varieties of beans with the majority of your meals. Use in burritos with rice. Very high in protein, low in calories.

Buckwheat: Mix it with your rice, pancakes, cereal, etc.

Chicken: Just be sure to remove the skin before eating. Turkey: Same as with Chicken.

Fish: Not just Negative Calorie fish, but others as well. Add these to your daily meals when you’re not on the diet.

Cottage cheese: Dip your vegetables in it or eat it plain.

Pasta: High in carbohydrates. Rich in starch.

Yogurt: Protein and calcium rich. Great for snacks when you’re not on the diet.

Bananas: Have a banana split! Mix them with strawberries.

Peppers: Hot peppers, chili peppers, try them all! They’re hot, they’’re spicy, and they speed up your metabolism!

The thing is, is that all of these methods can indeed work.

Really: exercise, eating strategically, and ensuring that your body has catabolism-friendly supplements are but three of many generally good ideas.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that many of us have no real scientific understanding of what, how, or why these methods boost metabolism. Some of us, in fact, don’t really even know if they work; we just think that they do.

For example, a person may start a vigorous exercise program that includes significant aerobic cardiovascular movement, such as jogging or cycling. And indeed, after a week, that person may notice a drop in weight. Yet is this due to a boosted metabolism? Maybe; maybe not. Could it be due to water loss through perspiration that hasn’t been adequately replenished? Maybe or maybe not. The point here is that many people – at risk to their health and wellness – don’t quite understand the tips, strategies, and techniques of boosting their metabolism.

And that’s what this article is about.

The popular and widely respected Internet publication i-Villagei highlights 11 key ways to speed up metabolism. To most easily introduce and discuss them here, we’ve taken these 11 key ideas and broken them down into 3 broad categories:

• Exercise
• Lifestyle
• Diet

As you go through each of the 11 key points, you’ll certainly note that there is some overlap between them. For example, it’s hard to imagine that introducing exercise into your life isn’t, in many ways, a lifestyle choice.

Similarly, integrating all kinds of metabolism-boosting foods into your diet is surely going to influence how you spend your time (probably less time in fast food line-ups, for one!).
So with this being said, please don’t get bogged down in the categories; they are merely provided here to help organize these points, and to help you easily refer to them in the future. The important thing for you to do is understand each of the 14 points, and evaluate how you can responsibly integrate them into your life.



Exercise

It’s going to be old news for you to be reminded that exercising is a bit part of boosting your metabolism and burning up calories. Unless you’re born with one of those unusually active metabolisms which allows you to, almost freakishly, eat thousands of calories a day without weight-gain consequences, you’re like the vast majority of us who need to give your metabolisms a bit of a kick through exercising.

Now, you might think that cardiovascular (aerobic) exercise is an important part of boosting your metabolism; and you’d be right! Provided that, of course, your qualified doctor confirms that you’re able to start a program of cardiovascular exercise, this is indeed the place to start. Increasing heart rate, blood circulation, body temperature, and oxygen intake/carbon dioxide exchange all send messages to the system to initiative catabolism (breaking down cells and using them for energy). Yet if cardiovascular exercising is the place to start, does that mean that it’s the place to end?

No! Many people, who aren’t as educated as you’ll be when you’ve finished this book, responsibly start a dedicated program of cardiovascular health, but they don’t go any further. Not because they’re lazy; but because, frankly, they don’t know that there is significantly more that they can do in their home gym, or at the fitness club, that will boost their metabolism even more potently. We focus upon these added activities now, below.

Build Muscle

Many people – particularly some women – are very leery about undertaking any exercise regimen that can lead to muscle building. The old perception was that muscle building leads to muscle bulking, and before long, gorging forearm veins and other unwanted results. This is, frankly, not the case. Provided that women aren’t supporting their workouts with specific muscle-building supplements, there is no need to be concerned; because building lean muscle won’t make them bulk up. Still, however, the question remains: why would women (and, of course, men) who want to boost their metabolism focus on muscle building? Isn’t cardiovascular exercising the only thing that matters?

Again, the answer is: No! In addition to a healthy and responsible cardiovascular program, muscle building is an exceptionally powerful way to boost metabolism.

How? Because a pound of muscle burns more calories than a pound of fat. And what does this mean? It means (and get ready to stare in awe) that if you have more muscle on your body – anywhere on your body – you will simply burn more calories as a result. You don’t even have to do anything. You’ll simply burn more calories, because muscle simply requires more of an energy investment. Of course, as you can infer, if you build muscle and then leave it alone, over time, the muscle fibers will weaken and you’ll lose that wonderful calorie-burning factory. But that’s no problem, because all you need to do is build and maintain healthy muscle.

It may sound daunting; especially if at the moment you perceive yourself to have much more fat than muscle. Yet the important thing for you to remember is that once you start building muscle – through any kind of strength training – your body will itself start burning more calories. It has to; even while you sleep, or go to a movie, or read a book. It’s like putting your calorie-burning (catabolism) program on auto-pilot.

So don’t let a little (or even a lot) of extra flab, at the moment, deter you from believing that muscle building is important. Yes, you should enjoy cardiovascular exercise too, because that’s ultimately how your body is going to burn existing fat. But muscle building plays a profoundly supportive role in that pursuit. And it’s an exponential one, too: the more fat you transform into muscle, the more calories you’ll burn simply to maintain that new muscle (and the wonderful cycle goes on and on!).

Interval Training

The basic weight loss nuts and bolts behind cardiovascular exercise (or any kind of exercise, really) is, as you know, a matter of catabolism. Essentially, if you can engineer your body to require more energy, your body will comply by breaking cells down to deliver it; and that process (metabolism) burns calories. Simple, right?

So based on that logic, something called interval training neatly fits in with the overall plan. Interval training is simply a adding high-energy burning component to your exercise plan on an infrequent, or interval, basis.

For example, you may be at a stage where you can jog for 20 minutes every other day, and thus put your heart into a cardiovascular zone during this time. This, obviously, is going to help you boost your metabolism and thus burn calories/energy. Yet you can actually burn disproportionately more calories if, during that 20 minute jog, you add a 30 second or 1 minute sprint.

Why? Because during this 30 seconds or 1 minute, you give your body a bit of a jolt.
Not an unhealthy jolt; remember, we’re talking about quick bursts here, not suddenly racing around the track or through the park! By giving your body an interval jolt, it automatically – and somewhat unexpectedly – has to turn things up a notch. And to compensate for your extra energy requirements, the body will burn more calories.

It’s essential for you to always keep in mind that interval training only works when it’s at intervals. This may seem like a strange thing to say (and even difficult to understand), but it’s actually very straightforward. The metabolism-boosting benefits that you enjoy as a result of interval training are primarily due to the fact that your body, suddenly, needs to find more energy.

While it was chugging along and supplying your energy needs during your cardiovascular exercising, it all of a sudden needs to go grab some more for 30 seconds or a minute; and in that period, it will boost your metabolism as if it were given a nice, healthy jolt. As you can see, if you suddenly decided to extend your 30 second or 1 minute sprint into a 20 minute sprint, you simply wouldn’t experience all of the benefits.

Yes, your body would use more energy if you extend yourself to the higher range of your aerobic training zone. But your body won’t necessarily get that jolt that only comes from interval training. So remember: your goal with interval training is to give your body a healthy jolt where it suddenly says to itself: “Whoa! We need more energy here FAST, this person has increased their heart rate from 180 beats per minute to 190 beats per minute! Let’s go to any available cell, like those fat cells down at the waist, and break them down via catabolism so that this person can get the energy that they need!”

Remember (sorry to be repetitive, but this is very important): the whole point of interval training in this way is to give your body a sudden, limited, healthy jolt where it needs more energy – quick!

If you simply increase your speed and stay there, while your body may, overall burn some more calories, it won’t get that jolt. Also bear in mind that interval training can indeed last longer than 30 seconds or a minute. Some experts suggest that you can use interval training for 30-40 minutes, depending on your state of health and what your overall exercise regimen looks like.

The reason we’re focusing on 30 seconds to 1 minute is simply to give you a clear understanding that interval training is a kind of mini training within a training program.
As always, don’t overdo it with your interval training. Your goal here is to become healthier and stronger, and lose weight in that process. You gain nothing if you run so fast or bike so hard during interval training that you hurt yourself. You will actually undermine your own health, and possibly have to stop exercising while torn muscles or other ailments heal.

The first function is creating tissue and cells. Each moment, our bodies are creating more cells to replace dead or dysfunctional cells. For example, if you cut your finger, your body (if it’s functioning properly) will begin – without even wasting a moment or asking your permission –the process of creating skin cells to clot the blood and start the healing process. This creation process is indeed a metabolic response, and is called anabolism.

On the other hand, there is the exact opposite activity taking place in other parts of the body. Instead of building cells and tissue through metabolism, the body is breaking down energy so that the body can do what it’s supposed to do. For example, as you aerobically exercise, your body temperature rises as your heart beat increases and remains with a certain range. As this happens, your body requires more oxygen; and as such, your breathing increases as you intake more H2O. All of this, as you can imagine, requires additional energy.

After all, if your body couldn’t adjust to this enhanced requirement for oxygen (both taking it in and getting rid of it in the form of carbon dioxide), you would collapse! Presuming, of course, that you aren’t overdoing it, your body will instead begin converting food (e.g. calories) into energy. And this process, as you know, is a metabolic process, and is called catabolism.

So as you can see, the metabolism is a constant process that takes care of two seemingly opposite function: anabolism that uses energy to create cells, and catabolism that breaks down cells to create energy.

Indeed, it’s in this way that the metabolism earns its reputation as a harmonizer. It brings together these apparently conflicting functions, and does so in an optimal way that enables the body to create cells as needed, and break them down, again as needed.

Metabolism and Weight Loss

By now, you already have a sense of how metabolism relates to weight loss (catabolic metabolism, or breaking cells down and transforming them into energy). To understand this process even more clearly, we can introduce a very important player in the weight loss game: the calorie.

Calories

Calories are simply units of measure. They aren’t actually things in and of themselves; they are labels for other things, just like how an inch really isn’t anything, but it measures the distance between two points.

So what do calories measure? Easy: they measure energy.

Yup, the evil calorie – the bane of the dieter’s existence – is really just a 3-syllable label for energy. It’s important to highlight this, because the body itself, despite its vast intelligence (much of which medical science cannot yet understand, only appreciate in awe) does not really do a very intelligent job of distinguishing good energy from bad.

Actually, to be blunt, the body doesn’t care about where the energy comes from. Let’s explore this a little more, because it’s very important to the overall understanding of how to boost your metabolism, particularly when we look at food choices. In our choice-laden grocery stores, with dozens of varieties of foods – hundreds, perhaps – there seems to be a fairly clear awareness of what’s good food, and what’s bad or junk food.

For example, we don’t need a book to remind us that, all else being equal, a plum is a good food, whereas a tub of thick and creamy double-fudge ice cream is a bad food. Not bad tasting, of course; but, really, you won’t find many fit people eating a vat of ice cream a day, for obvious reasons.

So what does this have to do with calories and energy?

It’s this: while you and I can evaluate our food choices and say that something (like a plum) is a healthy source of energy, and something else (like a tub of ice cream) is an unhealthy source of energy, the body doesn’t evaluate. Really.

It sounds strange and amazing, but the body really doesn’t care. To the body, energy is energy. It takes whatever it gets, and doesn’t really know that some foods are healthier than others. It’s kind of like a garbage disposal: it takes what you put down it, whether it should go down or not.

So let’s apply this to the body, and to weight gain. When the body receives a calorie – which, as we know, is merely a label for energy – it must do something with that energy.

In other words, putting all other nutrients and minerals aside, if a plum delivers 100 calories to the body, it has to accept those 100 calories. The same goes for 500 calories from a (small) tub of ice cream: those 500 calories have to be dealt with.

Now, the body does two things to that energy: it either metabolizes it via anabolism, or it metabolizes it via catabolism. That is, it will either convert the energy (calories) into cells/tissue, or it will use that energy (calories) to break down cells.

Now the link between calories/energy, metabolism, and weight loss becomes rather clear and direct. When there is an excess of energy, and the body can’t use this energy to deal with any needs at the time, it will be forced to create cells with that extra energy. It has to.

It doesn’t necessarily want to, but after figuring out that the energy can’t be used to do anything (such as help you exercise or digest some food), it has to turn it into cells through anabolism.

And those extra cells? Yup, you guessed it: added weight!

In a nutshell (and nuts have lots of calories by the way, so watch out and eat them in small portions…), the whole calorie/metabolism/weight gain thing is really just about excess energy.

When there are too many calories in the body – that is, when there’s too much energy from food – then the body transforms those calories into stuff.

And that stuff, most of the time, is fat. Sometimes, of course, those extra calories are transformed into muscle; and this is usually a good thing for those watching their weight or trying to maintain an optimal body fat ratio.

In fact, because muscles require calories to maintain, people with strong muscle tone burn calories without actually doing anything; their metabolism burns it for them.

This is the primary reason why exercising and building lean muscle is part of an overall program to boost your metabolism; because the more lean muscle you have, the more places excess calories can go before they’re turned into fat.

A Final Word About Fat

There’s a nasty rumor floating around out there that fat cells are permanent. And the nastiest thing about this rumor is that it’s true.

Yes, most experts conceded that fat cells – once created – are there for life. Yet this doesn’t spell doom and gloom to those of us who could stand to drop a few pounds. Because even though experts believe that fat cells are permanent, they also agree that fat cells can be shrunk. So even if the absolute number of fat cells in your body remains the same, their size – and hence their appearance and percentage of your overall weight – can be reduced.

Recap

So while we haven’t gone into any medical detail – because we don’t need to or want to – we have covered some key basics about metabolism. In fact, you probably know as much about metabolism now as many so-called experts.

The bottom line is simply that metabolism represents a process – countless processes, in fact – that convert food into energy. When this process creates cells, it’s called anabolism. When this process breaks cells down, it’s called catabolism.

For people trying to lose weight, it’s important to experience catabolism. That is, it’s important convert food into energy that is used to break cells down. Catabolism is also important because it prevents excess energy (calories) from being stored by the body.

Remember: when the body has too many calories – regardless of what food source those calories came from – it can only do two things. It can desperately try and see if you have any energy needs (like maybe you’re running a marathon at the time). Or, more often, it will have to store those calories. It has no choice. And unless you have lean muscle that is gobbling up those excess calories, you’ll be adding fat.