Eating Foods That Speed Up Your Metabolism Or A Low Calorie Diet?
If you are over 30 years old and starting to gain a bit of unwanted weight, try altering your diet to include more foods that speed up your metabolism rather than going on that low calorie diet, to shed that excess weight.
Metabolism is the means by which the food we consume is converted into energy. The most common, and usually unrecognized, reason for weight gain as we age is the decrease in speed of our metabolism.
When we are young, our bodies have not stopped growing, we are more active, and we have an abundance of new developing muscle to look after. This muscle development needs a large amount of energy, and naturally being more active uses energy too. Because of these things, in our youth our metabolism has to work quickly to keep up with our needs for more and more energy.
Over thirty years of age our bodies stop growing and we tend to lose muscle. For this reason we don't need to metabolise as much energy, as less muscle uses less energy to maintain. Also, as we grow older we tend to become more sedentary which, again, requires less energy to carry out our daily routine. This adds further to the reduction in demand for energy from our metabolism.
As well as these two things there is also likely to be a further factor. It is more than likely we will still be consuming a similar amount of food for our bodies to metabolise. The net result is that we create more energy than we use and the only alternative for our bodies to do with this unneeded energy is store it in our fat cells, which get bigger, and bigger……….
This decrease in energy needs is the effect of the slowing down of our metabolism.
Just a little reminder here for those who have forgotten or perhaps didn’t know; energy is measured in calories. So, when I say that you are over-producing energy, translate that to mean you have consumed too many calories and you will understand what I mean!
It would appear logical to think that all we need to do here is just go on a low calorie crash diet and perhaps cut back on a few meals – maybe miss breakfast (you could probably save a bit of early morning time there too!)
That may well look the obvious thing to do, but if that’s the way you think you should approach this situation you are way off the mark.
Drastically reducing your calorie intake and skipping meals may appear to be a wonderful idea and an obvious way of reducing the calories, but it will not produce the result you desire. If you attempt to do it this way you will be trying to ride over your own inbuilt survival instincts. Put in this situation, the first thing your body will do is reduce your rate of metabolism to save energy because that is it’s natural response to what it will see as a starvation situation.
Missing breakfast is a cardinal sin. The reason is in the name. It is named breakfast because you are literally "breaking the fast" your body has undergone while you have been sleeping. Research has shown that your metabolism really does reduce while you sleep, and does not come back up to speed until you eat again. Missing breakfast means holding your metabolism in reduced speed mode at a time when you need it to be working flat out. Your body needs the energy surge it receives from breakfast.
The sensible way to approach this situation is to gradually reduce your intake of calories and introduce foods that speed up your metabolism into your diet. You could also bring some exercise into your life. We all know that exercise will burn off energy which, in turn, will increase up your metabolism.
So, for best results utilise a combination of a gradual reduction in your intake,foods that speed up you metabolism and exercise to help you lose those unwanted pounds.
