Managing Your Metabolism

Managing your weight as you grow older is one of the best ways that you can work to maintain your health and help to keep illness at bay. This is achievable in a variety of ways when you make slight adjustments to your lifestyle and diet.

What is My Metabolism

Your metabolism is directly linked to how well you are able to manage your weight. Let’s take a closer look now at his this works!

When you consume food it is either stored in your body or used immediately as fuel for energy. The process of turning this food into energy is known as your metabolism. If the rate at which your metabolism works is high then this food will quickly be converted into this energy fuel.

However, if your metabolic rate is slow then this process will take longer and your body will store some of these calories as fat. Your metabolic rate is dependant on a number of factors and will vary from person to person.

If you have a slow metabolism then this may well be the reason that you find it difficult to lose excess weight. Fortunately, you can have a certain degree of control over your metabolic rate. Today we are going to share some ways in which you can speed yours up in order to

Healthy Fats

Many people believe that they should avoid fatty foods if they want to be able to lose weight effectively. But the exciting truth is that foods that are high in healthy fats can actually help with weight loss. The presence of healthy fats in the body helps to keep blood sugar levels stable and encourages fat stores to be used as energy.

Fantastic healthy fats to include in your diet for metabolism management are:

avocados
coconut oil
extra-virgin olive oil
raw, unsalted nuts

Hydration

Staying hydrated is probably one of the simplest ways to give your metabolism a boost! Making sure that you drink an adequate amount of water during the day better enables practically every part of your body to function more effectively. Up to 60% of your body is made up of water, meaning that dehydration can quickly affect any number of the essential processes in the body.

You will be continuously losing water throughout the day, so it is important to replenish your stores frequently! It has been suggested that adequate hydration can increase your metabolic rate by as much as 30%.

Certain types of green tea can be helpful for boosting your metabolism and will also work to keep you hydrated. This is because some teas contain thermogenic nutrients which encourage your body to produce heat. This helps to boost your metabolism and to burn fat!

Green tea also has a number of other health benefits that you can click here to read about in more detail!

Alcohol

As well as deliberately increasing your intake of water you should also try to limit your alcohol consumption. The process of metabolising alcohol prevents your body from metabolising carbohydrates and fats as well as it usually would. This means that by drinking alcohol you are actively slowing your metabolism down.

Muscle Gain

Building muscle is great for boosting health in several ways and your metabolism certainly stands to benefit when you do so. Muscles require more energy than fat does, meaning that you will burn more calories even when your body is idle.

Adding strength training exercises into your existing gym regime is simple to do. Alternatively you can use your own bodyweight at home to get build your muscle mass, such as with push-ups and squats.

Gut Health

If the bacteria in your gut is out of balance then your metabolism can feel the effects. If you do not have an ample amount of bacteria in your gut then your metabolic rate can be slowed, causing weight gain to become much more likely and weight loss to be all the more difficult.

Balancing your gut health may sound like a complicated process but can actually be achieved by increasing the amount of probiotic-rich foods you consume. Fermenting your own foods at home is a great way to achieve this, but you can also purchase pre-made produce in your local supermarket, such as sauerkraut, kefir and kombucha.

The best way to manage your metabolism and continue to maintain this good health is to attempt to embrace all of the aforementioned concepts. Furthermore, by staying active and eating well you can also give your body the support that it needs to reach a healthy weight. As you age your metabolism will begin to slow, making it all the more important that you work to maintain your all-round health in a variety of ways.

The important thing to remember is that you always have the option to make positive choices when it comes to your lifestyle and your diet, meaning that you always have some degree of control over certain aspects of your health!

References

1) https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-lookup/doi/10.1210/jc.2003-030780