Ways To Boost Metabolism, Fast

There are many ways to boost metabolism but I'm going to zoom in on just 8 ways that I think are the most powerful......

First, get to know your metabolism.

It's the rate your body converts food into energy and burns it off as calories. The faster you burn off calories, the more weight/fat you can slice off even if you eat the same amount of food.

For all of us, we use up this kind of energy (calories) in 3 ways:

• 60-70% to power our body for all its daily functions, to keep us going. This is otherwise known as basal or resting metabolic rate
• About 30% in exercise and other physical activities
• The remaining 10% in eating food since the processing and digesting that's involved requires energy. This is also known as the thermic effect of food

The 8 fast ways I suggest to boost all these 3 areas of your metabolism are:

1. Do Cardio Exercise

It's the most powerful and direct way to crank up your metabolic rate as when you exercise, you need energy to fuel your body to do the job.

Go for running, jogging, swimming, biking, dancing.....as these are excellent cardio exercises that use up lots of energy and hence burn off more calories.

Cardio for at least 30 minutes per session for 3-4 times or 4-5 times per week, which can elevate your metabolism for several hours even after you've finished exercising.

The best time to do cardio exercise is in the morning so you kick start your metabolism for the day.

2. Do weights

Start weight training and do 3-4 times per week for 20-30 minutes per session, to promote your muscle growth. As muscle is metabolically active (it burns calories even when you're resting) and burns more calories than fat, the more muscle you've, the more calories you burn, while you're at rest.

P/S: For every 1 lb of muscle you pack into your body, you burn about 50 extra calories per day without any additional effort on your part

3. Eat Breakfast, Don't Skip It

When you sleep at night, you stop eating food, hence you sort of going into a "fasting" phase and your metabolism also slows down. So, eating breakfast first thing in the morning is the WAY to kick start back your metabolism, to signal to your body that you aren't "fasting" and "starving" anymore, so your body resumes its normal metabolic rate, and not goes into a "starvation" mode (thinking that you're facing "starvation") by slowing down your metabolism

4. Eat Smaller Meals And Eat Often

If you eat 5-6 smaller meals throughout the day, you'll keep high your metabolic rate simply because you're using the thermic effect of food, to burn off energy. The more frequent you eat, the more often your metabolic rate gets hiked up in the day.

It's best to eat major portion of your food earlier in the day; with dinner your smallest and lightest meal and eat it before 8 p.m. This helps your body process and burn the food when you're still awake and move around.

5. Eat Enough Calories

Remember you need about 60 -70% of your calories in a day to power your body to get going? If you consume too few calories, your body automatically slows down its metabolic rate (thinking that you're starving), to protect you from losing energy (calories), to keep you going.

An average healthy person needs to consume at least 1,200 calories per day, to keep his/her basal metabolic rate at healthy, going level.

6. Eat More Lean Protein

It takes more energy for your body to digest protein than carbohydrate or fat. Hence, you should include some lean protein such as lean chicken and fish in your meals.

7. Eat Fibre

Food with lots of fibre also gives your thermic metabolism a boost. High-fibre foods like fruits & vegetables, beans and whole grains (like brown rice, whole grain pasta/bread) simply take longer to digest and therefore help burn more calories.

8. Drink Plenty Of Water (At Least 8 Big Glasses Daily)

Just so you know, the energy burning process of metabolism needs water to work effectively.

Cecelia Yap is an avid exerciser and author of the popular exercise website: perfect-body-toning.com - a web site born out of her passion which she successfully turns into a profitable business

Perhaps you have a passion or hobby you'd like to write about. Find out how you too can turn it into a profitable business like Cecelia does, here: http://www.perfect-body-toning.com/my-passion.html