Read 42 times since Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Do you want to control or even to lose weight? One sure way to achieve that is to raise your metabolism. The issue at hand is how fast your body burns calories will depend on a number of variables as no two persons are alike.
You see, some people are naturally born with very high metabolic rate that no matter how much they eat, they will find it hard to put on weight. Conversely, some people gain weight easily.
Furthermore, men tend to have higher metabolism than women. For the more matured folks, their metabolisms slow down as they get older. While you can't control your age, gender and genetics, you can still raise your metabolism level naturally to burn away your body fat.
One of the most common ways that people use to raise their metabolism is to have an aerobic exercise program such as jogging, running uphill or using a stationery bike. However, most people do not realized that the cardio aerobic exercises they do have to be intensive enough to achieve its best effect.
You see, if the exercise activity intensity is high enough, the metabolic rate can remain high for the next several hours after exercising instead of going back to normal level quickly. This is because higher intensity exercise delivers a bigger and longer increase in the resting metabolic rate than lower intensity ones.
Unknown to most people, water is needed to process calories, so even a slight dehydration can cause your metabolism level to drop. Several studies had found that people who drink eight or more glasses of water a day burn more calories than those who drink less. So drink more water, I mean plain water instead of sugary drinks which are full of calories.
Muscular people tend burn more calories than their less muscular counterparts. It has been estimated that every pound of muscle burns about 6 calories per day just to sustain itself.
Therefore if you have twenty pounds more muscle, you will be burning extra 120 calories each day and if extrapolate that over a year, you will be burning a total of 43,800 calories a year. Moreover when you are training with weights to build muscles, you are also burning calories during those workout sessions.
You may not believe this but numerous researches had shown that eating more often do help people to lose excess weight. This is because having a smaller meal every 2 to 4 hours keeps your metabolism cranking hard. Furthermore, have high protein meals because your body burns more calories digesting protein and less for fat and carbohydrates.
Start a habit of drinking tea, especially unsweetened green tea or oolong tea as these teas contain caffeine and catechins which are helpful in increasing metabolic rate and catechins have anti-oxidant effect too.
Although you can do all the things described above to crank up your metabolism so as to lose weight, the best way is to build muscles because since the muscles is already part of your body, it will burn fat continually without any further effort on your part. Chris Chew is a sought after fitness and health consultant based in Singapore. Read his free articles at http://www.sgfitnessonline.com and http://www.sgfitness.com
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