The chemical reactions that occur in your body every second of every day are known as metabolism. Increasing your metabolic rate, i.e. the pace at which these chemical reactions take place, determines the number of calories burned by the body to sustain organ health and function.
The faster your metabolic rate, the more calories you burn. High metabolic rate ensures that it’s easier to lose excess body weight and keep it off. If you have just started a fat loss diet, increasing your metabolic rate will improve your fat loss and reduce the amount of time it takes to reach your goal weight.
Boost your metabolism and burn more body fat with these 4 tips.
Drink Cold Water
If you’re trying to lose body fat, then avoid sugary and diet sodas. Sugar-based sodas contain empty calories; every soda you drink takes around 1 hour of cardio to burn off. Diet sodas aren’t any better, the artificial sweetener, aspartame, increases gastrointestinal inflammation reducing metabolic rate.
Drink water, and wherever possible, drink cold water. Your body is over 80% water, and it needs to stay hydrated to perform optimally. Your body needs to heat cold water to absorb it, and that process burns more calories than drinking water at room temperature. Studies show drinking 17 oz. of water increases resting metabolism by up to 30% for almost an hour.
Try a HIIT Workout
Do more. Are you spending your workouts aimlessly walking on a treadmill? This approach works to improve general health, but it’s not the best strategy for people wanting to drop body fat. An average low-intensity, steady-state cardio workout on a treadmill burns up to 250 calories an hour.
Switch things up and try a high-intensity interval workout instead. HIIT involves working at your maximum capacity for 90 seconds, followed by a 15 to 30 second active rest period. Repeat this strategy for 8 to 10 rounds and watch the fat melt away. HIIT workouts can burn up to 5 times more calories than steady-state cardio, in half the time.
Go Ketogenic
Is your diet optimized for fat loss? Your daily calorie total determines whether you will lose weight, gain weight, or stay within your weight range. Consuming more calories than your body needs results in the accumulation of body fat. Eating fewer calories than your daily requirement results in fat loss. It’s that simple.
Research on the ketogenic diet shows it produces outstanding fat loss results. To induce ketosis, stop eating carbohydrates. In the absence of carbs, your body switches from gluconeogenesis; where it buns glycogen for fuel, to ketosis; where it burns fat for fuel. You can enter the ketogenic state after your body has depleted its glycogen stores, which takes around 5 to 7 days. Using an exogenous ketones supplement can help you reach ketosis faster.
People using keto diets burn fat faster and reach their goals sooner, speak to your nutritionist for advice on how the ketogenic diet can help you achieve your ideal physique.
Optimize Your Sleep
When you sleep, the brain clears itself of accumulated toxins, flushing them from your neurological system. Sleep repairs muscular damage from exercise and restores hormone balance. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, you’re sabotaging your fat loss efforts by slowing your metabolic rate. A lack of sleep deteriorates metabolic function, slowing the body’s natural fat-burning process.
When you’re tired, your body needs more calories to sustain metabolism. In a sleep-deprived state, the brain signals an increase in production of the “hunger hormone” ghrelin. Trying to lose weight while feeling hungry and tired is exceptionally challenging and could result in binge eating that will ruin your fat loss results and slow metabolic rate.
*collaborative post