Increase your metabolism, burn more fats

Increase your metabolism, burn more fats

Metabolism is the process our body converts the food we eat into energy for basic functioning of the body. Food we eat (calories) —> by Metabolism (digestion,conversion,etc) —-> gives out energy.

BMR ( basal metabolic rate ) = metabolic rate of a resting person. . A person with a higher BMR will burn more calories than one with a lower BMR.

Several factors that influence our BMR includes
1) age (decrease with age by 2% per decade after age 20)
2) height ( higher BMR for those who are taller and thinner)
3) Gender ( males have higher BMR than females )
4) body composition ( higher for those with more muscle )
5) outside temperature ( higher in extreme heat or cold )
6) dieting ( lower for people on low calorie diets )
7) stress ( BMR higher under stress ).

The 2 factors that we can absolutely control is our diet (what we eat,how often we eat) and our body composition.

What happen when you go on a diet and starve yourself
If you eat 2 meals a day and you think that helps you to lose weight, you need to think again. Your body slows down the metabolism to protect you from starving, your fat cells begin to release less of the hormone leptin, which is the signal that tells your brain you are well fed and not starving. This in turn triggers other hormonal changes such as decrease in the hormone responsible for regulatiing metabolism, and a dramatic increase in appetite.

***Do you know that if you eat at 7pm and the next meal is at 10am the next day, your body goes into starvation and fat storing zone. Anything you eat, even a small slice of fruit, is converted into fat and stored, until you get back into a regular eating schedule. And all the time, these fats gets deposited in our abdominal area as belly fats.

***Do you know? the abdomen/belly is the first part of our body to deposit fats and the last to lose fats …. no matter how you train, run,swim,sit up,crunch,dance … fats in the belly is the last to go.

By increasing the frequency of your meals intake to 5 - 6 times at 3 -4 hour intervals ( small portions each time ), your body actually speed up the metabolism process. As you eat in small amount, most of it is used up for energy expendicture and nothing gets stored as fats.

Take for example if you are at a campfire, if small amount of firewood is added to the fire at small intervals consistently, you will keep the fire burning for a longer time ( thats what we want to achieve with metabolism ). If you load a huge supply of firewood and leave it to burn, you may start a big fire but it dies down faster ……

Ever had a heavy/good meal (body experience insulin surge) , enjoying every bite of it and just moments later feels tired and sleepy?

"GOOD MEALS" tends to be high in proteins ( contains tryptophan, which has a sedative effect). Large amount of food eaten causes digestion to be a major activity in your body, blood cells are diverted to your intestines from other parts of the body. Your limbs feels heavy and your brain (lacking oxygen supply) … makes you sleepy.

Its interesting to know that 1 pound of body muscle burns 50 calories at BMR ( when resting) and 1 pound of body fats only burns 2 calories. And about 70% of our total calory burned in a day results from BMR (resting).

So it make perfect sense to have more muscles than fats. Ladies should not be too concern about being too muscular as you do not have the necessary hormone testosterone, so unless you inject yourself with steroids, you are not going to get bulky and muscular like guys do from resistance training.

Combining resistance training, cardio exercises and taking regular small meal portions will certainly help you to jumpstart your metabolism … and burn those stubborn fats.