Natural Ways To Rev Your Metabolism and Lose Weight

When your metabolism is slow, you feel sluggish and tired all the time. Metabolism is the rate at which you burn calories even at rest. If yours is slow, you gain weight faster and put yourself at risk for disease. Getting your metabolic rate back where it belongs can be a challenge as you get older, or if you live a sedentary life. Fortunately, there’s plenty you can do to speed up your metabolism and, best of all, it can be done naturally.

Get Yourself Moving

One of the easiest ways to increase your metabolism starting right now is to get yourself in motion. Incorporating cardiovascular exercise like running, swimming, walking and aerobics is necessary several times per week. These exercises will give your body a calorie burn that can last for hours after the initial workout. When you’re stuck at the office all day long, get up every hour and move around. If you’re new to exercise, start slow and gradually work your way up.

Look at Your Appetite

As you begin your weight loss journey, the first thing you should assess is your diet. If you’re eating a mostly healthy diet, but are still gaining pounds, look at your appetite. When you’re ravenous all the time, you’re going to overeat, increasing your weight and slowing your metabolism. To curb your appetite, look to all-natural appetite suppressants such as ginger, green tea, garcinia cambogia and the convenient Thrive Patch that contains some of those ingredients.

Lift Weights

Lifting weights is a great way to intensify your metabolism. Regular weight training increases muscle mass that’s efficient at burning calories even when you’re in a resting state. Since weight lifting burns more calories than a regular workout alone, over time you’ll lose more weight and gain a leaner physique. Don’t think you need an expensive gym membership to lift weights. Any kind of home training will do the trick, like hand weights, push ups and doing crunches.

Eat Protein-Rich Foods

Since lifting weights boosts your metabolism, you can get even better results if you feed those muscles. The component that’s particularly abundant in muscle is protein. When you lift weights, your muscles increase in size because of this nutrient. When you eat more protein, you provide your muscles extra material to work with. To support both muscle mass and metabolism, incorporate plenty of protein-rich foods into your diet like lean meat, chicken, eggs, fish and nuts.

Drink More Water

Everyone knows that drinking water helps you lose weight. It fills you up, it’s calorie free and it prevents bloating. So how does it stimulate your metabolism? The key is to drink your water cold. When you’re sipping on ice-cold water, you activate something called thermogenesis, or the production of body heat. Your body has to work especially hard to warm that water up and the more it works, the faster your metabolism becomes. Keep in mind that drinking water also helps facilitate digestion.

Get Hot & Spicy

If you love hot and spicy food, you’re in luck. That fiery salsa you crave may help to kick your metabolism into high gear. The compound in hot peppers that accomplishes this is called capsaicin and not only does it make your mouth feel hot, it increases your body temperature. That means thermogenesis comes into play once again. As your body becomes warmer, it burns calories and your metabolism speeds up. Foods that are rich in capsaicin are habanero and Tabasco chili peppers, so if you can stand the heat, you’ll enjoy the results.

Avoid Health Problems

A faster metabolism helps you stay trim and lose weight faster. This will prevent a myriad of serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. Boosting your metabolism can be accomplished naturally through exercise, diet, weight lifting and drinking more water. These simple lifestyle changes will put you on the road to faster weight loss and better overall health.

Mikkie Mills

Mikkie is a freelance writer from Chicago. She is also a mother of two who loves sharing her ideas on interior design, budgeting hacks, and DIY. When she’s not writing, she’s chasing the little ones or rock climbing at the local climbing gym.