Increasing your metabolism

Increase metabolism to speed fat loss

The quickest way to succeed in losing weight, and to keep it off, is by increasing your metabolism. Don’t be fooled by all of the fad "diets". Just think of all those lean body builders. How do you think they achieved their fitness goals? They have developed incredibly fast and efficient metabolism.

The problem with fad diets is that many actually cause the metabolism to slow down. A decreased metabolic rate is often the very reason that weight loss progress grinds to a sudden halt. Increasing exercise often has no effect, and reducing food intake often won’t help either. Because the net loss of protein in the muscles continues to lower your metabolism, the body will adapt to the lower calorie intake.

Permanent fat loss will occur if the metabolism is increased beyond normal!

It’s a physiological fact that when we lose weight, we also lose protein from our muscles. And the quicker the weight loss, the greater the loss of protein. Because there is less intake of protein from dieting, the protein in the muscles is broken down and used for energy or to create new proteins for our immune systems. Unfortunately, a net loss of protein will always decrease the body’s metabolism.

As protein is lost from the cells, it gradually lowers the total lean body weight. This affects the body composition and lowers the metabolism. Because of this process, we gradually require fewer calories to maintain body weight. If the current diet is continued, weight loss will eventually stop. In fact, it’s even possible to SLOWLY GAIN BACK WEIGHT if a dieter sticks to a very low calorie diet!

Anaerobic exercise burns more carbohydrates but can help increase metabolism to burn fat indirectly. Learn the difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise.

Anaerobic Exercise

The words aerobic and anaerobic refer to energy pathways that are utilized during exercise. Aerobic means "with oxygen" and anaerobic means "without oxygen".

Fat needs oxygen to burn completely so in order to burn fat during an exercise we need to move slowly and smoothly. This enables muscle cells to be supplied with enough oxygen to continue with its aerobic capacity and utilize fat as the main energy source.

Anaerobic exercise requires moving at an increased pace or with greater effort. Exercising this way burns more calories but results in a greater demand for oxygen which cannot be delivered in sufficient quantities to allow cells to continue burning fat.

When we breath heavy we start to develop an oxygen debt and muscle cells switch to burning mainly carbohydrates, this fuel burns quickly and does not require oxygen.

So, exercising anaerobically will pump up your metabolism ,get you over the "hump" and back on your weight management track!

Next blog post will be on nutrition and supplements!. Till then live lean, fit and well!

Richard