Raising your metabolism should be your primary goal if you are looking to lose weight. While traditional diets and exercising will certainly help you lose weight, increasing your metabolism will help your body burn more calories at all times. Everyone has a Basal Metabolic Rate based on their age, weight, gender and other factors that determines how many calories they burn while resting. Learning how to calculate your BMR is a great way to know exactly how many calories you need to burn each day to reach or maintain your goal weight. These are the five best ways that you can speed up your metabolism and increase your BMR.
Build More Muscle
Building muscle through workouts is a great way to increase your metabolism. People with more muscle burn more calories while resting. A pound of muscle needs to burn three times as many calories as a pound of fat in order to sustain itself for the day. This is the main reason why men usually have a higher metabolism than women. If you are truly interested in losing weight and speeding up your metabolism, then you need to focus your workouts on building muscle throughout your body.
Stay Hydrated
Water helps the body process and burn calories, so increasing your metabolism can be as simple as drinking more water. If you body becomes even slightly dehydrated, then your metabolism will decrease significantly. Eight glasses of water a day is the typical recommendation, but it will not hurt if you drink even more water. It may be tempting to grab a sports drink after a long workout, but you will be doing your body a disservice if you do not drink water. Drinking green tea is also a great way to increase your metabolism.
Add Spice to Your Diet
Eating spicy food is another great way to speed up the metabolism. Capsaicin can be found in every spicy pepper, and adding it to your diet will instantly boost your metabolism. The boost will only be temporary, but adding some spice to every meal can make the metabolic boost permanent. Add some red or green peppers to your dish the next time you make dinner and enjoy the increased metabolism.
Get Plenty of Sleep
Several studies have proven that there is a direct correlation between sleep and metabolism. Getting more sleep each night will instantly increase your metabolism. Since you also burn off more calories while sleeping than sitting on the couch, there is another added benefit of getting extra sleep each night. Watching that late night television show might seem like a good idea, but you are better off gaining an extra hour of sleep.
Eat Breakfast Every Day
Eating breakfast each morning is a great way to kick-start your metabolism each day. Skipping a meal during the morning will slow down your metabolism for the rest of the day, which can make it extremely hard to burn off your calories from lunch and dinner. If you are not very hungry when you first wake up in the morning, nutritionists recommend having a small snack. Eating this small snack is a great way to maintain your metabolism without adding too many calories to your diet.
Increasing your metabolism is the only way you will be able to maintain your desired weight. Once you have increased your metabolism, you will be able to have no problem burning off the calories from your meals. Getting your dream body will be easier than ever before because your workouts can be used to tone your body instead of burning off unwanted calories.