No question as we get older it seems harder and harder to keep the pounds off and charge up your metabolism. However, there are some common sense secrets that can help you boost your metabolism while increasing your overall health.
Secret #1: Eat breakfast
Many people do not allow enough time in the morning to eat breakfast. If you jump out of bed into the shower and rush off to work, that extra ten minutes you didn’t schedule to eat breakfast may cause you to put on the pounds.
Lifescript.com says to “Think of it in literal terms: Breakfast is ‘breaking’ the overnight ‘fast’ your body was in to conserve calories. Eating – especially a balanced breakfast every day – stimulates your metabolism.”
Secret #2: Drink water
Carrying water weight often tricks your mind when you jump on the scale. However, dehydration can potentially lead to fatigue and other symptoms. Lifescript.com notes that
dehydration can play tricks on your brain causing you to think you are hungry when in fact you just need more water. So make a habit of drinking plenty of water before and between meals. You may find that it actually curbs your appetite.
Secret #3: Move your body
I hear over and over that many don’t have time to workout. Your body, like your car, needs regular maintenance to be healthy. Would you skip your car’s oil change or changing of the tires? Probably not because it may cost you more later if you don’t take care of your car today. Same goes for your body, sounds impossible, but you can – and should – work out every day. Cardiovascular exercise, like running, dancing, swimming, or walking, accelerates your metabolism. Exercise helps you burn calories and may help suppress your appetite.
Remember to also balance your workout with weight or resistance training to tone your muscles and develop lean tissue mass, which burns more calories than fat. Simple free weights are a great place to start. Doing daily repetitions with five pound dumbbells can easily be done in front of the television. Also check out the door frame pull-up bars. You can easily hook a pull-up bar over your bathroom or closet door and jump on every day trying to pull up your body weight. It may take six months or longer to do a few repetitions but once you succeed in lifting up your own body weight, you know that you are in great shape!
Secret #4: Graze
Three large meals a day may not be the best metabolism boosting plan. Eating healthy small meals with in between healthy snacks may be the ticket to a slimmer waistline.
Eating five to six small meals during the day keeps the blood sugar more constant with energy available to your body. This can help boost your metabolism and your brain power. Keep healthy snacks available like fruits, veggies and yogurt. However, you need to ensure that your regular meals are smaller to accommodate the added snacking, or you’ll face unwanted weight gain from the added calories.
Secret #5: Catch more zzz’s
The number of hours that you sleep can impact on your waistline. According to lifescript.com:
Research shows that sleep deprivation can send your hunger and appetite hormones out of whack. A four-year joint study by the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University found that adults who regularly slept for only five hours a night increased their levels of hunger-inducing ghrelin by 14.9% and lowered their levels of appetite-suppressing leptin by 15.5%. This means double trouble for your fat cells: You end up eating more than you need, leaving you with extra pounds to show for it.
For a healthy amount of sleep, most sleep experts recommend seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.
Start with these simple common-sense metabolism boosting secrets to maintain a healthy weight and body.
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