How to Boost Your Metabolism
If you're wondering how to boost your metabolism, I'm sharing 3 things you need to be doing to rev up and optimize your metabolism.
You can do all of these things starting today, no matter your age, to make sure you keep your metabolism revved up.
Before we dive in, it's important to understand what factors actually make up the metabolism...
Resting Metabolic Rate: how much energy or calories it would take for you to be living in a coma.
Thermo Energetic Food: The amount of energy it takes to break down the foods you eat every day.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenic: The daily movement (walking, moving your body) you do.
Exercise Activity Thermogenesis: The actual amount of energy you burn during exercise.
1. Prioritize Strength Training
Let's start with how to optimize your resting metabolic rate. More muscle means you raise your resting metabolic rate. When you're in your late twenties, you start to lose muscle. You can counter this process by lifting weights because as you gain muscle, you'll increase your metabolism.
Note: when I say prioritize strength training and build more muscle, I'm talking about slow, controlled lifting with the intent of lifting more weight over time. This is not circuit training or fitness classes.
This is slowing things down and optimizing progressive overload, which optimizes strength, which optimizes your muscle mass.
2. Prioritize Protein
It takes more energy for your body to break down protein, so prioritize protein. Protein is going to help you build muscle. Plus, the more protein you eat, will also rev up your metabolism because it takes more energy than carbs and fats to break it down.
I recommend you stay between .7-1.1 grams or protein per lb. of body weight every day.
Note: if you're in a severe caloric deficit or you've been dieting for a long time, I recommend aiming for closer to 1 gram per lb. so that you can try to maintain as much muscle as possible during the dieting process.
3. Move more to increase NEAT
A lot of times, people focus on the exercise and how many calories they burn during it. (Fun fact: those little fitness trackers a lot of us wear are actually likely not accurate). But, it's really the movement outside of your exercise that truly can optimize your metabolism. So, here are some simple yet effective ways you can increase your NEAT on a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. basis:
- Take the stairs
- Park your car in the back of the parking lot
- Do a morning and/ or evening walk
- Track your daily steps
More movement equals an increase in the overall metabolic rate. The more movement you can get out of your day, especially if you have a desk job, will optimize your metabolism on a DAILY basis.
Daily exercise is great (again, I recommend strength training), but it's not entirely about the calories you burn during the workout as it is about how that exercise is being optimized daily.
I hope you find these 3 tips to rev up your metabolism every single day no matter your age helpful!
Want more exclusive science-based fitness tips, myth-busting, and exercise ideas? Make sure to join my free Facebook group here!
