What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word metabolism? Weight loss, yes, is what pops into your brain. But what exactly is metabolism in a body and what is restarting your metabolism?
Metabolism is a mechanism that includes complex chemical functions in our body for maintaining life, for instance, breakdown of food into fuel and repairing of our body.
What is the connection between weight loss and metabolism? In simpler words, metabolic rate refers to how rapidly our body is burning calories.
There are times when you feel stagnant, fatigued and your weight won’t sway, this is the time when you need to restart metabolism in your body.
A postponing metabolism has side effects like food cravings, weight loss problems, mood swings, etc. Boosting your metabolism is not a difficult task, only a few good habits like a good diet and a lifestyle is all you need to adopt.
How to restart your metabolism?
Restarting your metabolism is not something as challenging as it sounds. You can boost your metabolism in three days. However, these are the main things that you need to improve to stimulate your metabolism.
Improve your sleep patterns
If you have been disturbing your sleep patterns lately, it’s time you set them right.
Lack of sleep can imbalance the hormones that affect the metabolic rate and increases the chance of weight gain.
Studies have shown that people who sleep 5.5 hours per day in a row for two weeks have decreased fat loss procedure by 55 percent.
So, how to restart metabolism by sleep? You must aim to sleep straight for 8 hours without any disturbance. A high-quality deep sleep rejuvenates the brain and revives the body.
The ideal sleep routine to rev up your metabolism is to sleep before midnight and wake up at 8 am. Sleeping before midnight might be impossible for you as you are tempted to visiting your social media sites or watching a nail-biting series on Netflix. This is when you have to fight your urge to stay up late. Therefore, to achieve 8 hours of sleep you must turn off the lights in your bedroom before midnight, boycotting all your desires.
Eat Healthily
Eating healthy does not refer to one of a healthy meal in a day. It refers to a balanced diet. Start your day with a breakfast and do not skip it.
To restart your metabolism you need to start your day with breakfast. Have your breakfast before your exercise or workout as breakfast before exercise quickens the post-workout metabolism.
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Probiotics
Probiotics are the good bacteria that keep you healthy and maintain the operating system of your body. These help us in various ways, like fighting off bad bacteria and boosting metabolism.
Greek yogurt is an example of probiotics. Having it in your breakfast is beneficial as it has an excellent amount of probiotics in it.
Probiotics also help in weight loss as it boosts the metabolism; it also absorbs a reduced amount of calories from the food consumed.
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Caffeine
Caffeine works wonders to restart your metabolism. Research shows that 100 milligrams of caffeine can restart metabolism from 3 to 11 percent.
If coffee is not your drink, don’t worry, green tea will play the role to restart metabolism in your body. Moreover, tea has an antioxidant known as catechin which also provides a boost in metabolic rate.
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Water
Coffee is ideal in the morning, but you cannot drink it throughout the day. So, water is the best way to boost your metabolism because it helps your digestive system to operate efficiently and makes your body free of toxins.
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Chili Peppers
Capsaicin is present in chili peppers that is said to have properties to boost metabolism and the ability to break down 50 of the extra calories.
So, eating spicy like adding chili pepper to your recipes will help you enhance your metabolism.
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Protein-rich meals
Lean proteins like eggs, meat, and dairy products in your meals can help your metabolism improve. These proteins help in muscle building and retention and also these are tough for the body to digest hence utilizing more energy to digest them.
Workout and Exercise
Exercise is a great way to boost your metabolism.
Strength training:
By strength training, you build up more muscle and when you have more muscle you have a better metabolic rate. More muscles help you burn calories even at rest.
Strength training exercises include weight lifting, squatting, cycling, etc.
Cardiovascular exercise:
Cardiovascular exercises are those that increase your heart rate. The example of cardio exercises are running, swimming, aerobics and walking.
The walk is the easiest exercise to adopt as it does not require any equipment and is not tough on joints. Cardio exercise for 45 minutes can increase metabolism for 14 hours after the workout.
Increasing general activities:
It is also known as NEAT exercise. NEAT is short for Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. It means spending energy in general activities like taking stairs in your office instead of an elevator, parking your car a little farther so you could walk a few more steps towards your workplace, etc. In this way, you burn your calories without any special workout. Doing some household chores is much better than sitting idle in front of the screen as it helps to burn extra calories and improve metabolism.
Meditation:
Meditation can be referred to as exercising with the mind. A person who is stressed has a slower metabolic rate due to the stress hormone cortisol. So they burn almost 100 calories lesser than a stress-free person.
Meditation corners the stress and lowers the levels of stress hormone increasing the metabolic rate. Moreover, meditation provides you control over your cravings and actions.
These are a few things that help you restart your metabolism.
How much time is required to restart your metabolism?
It is aforementioned that three days are even enough to restart your metabolism. However, sometimes it may take more time to reset the metabolic rate. Within three months you are expected to notice changes. If you lack changes in your weight in three months timeframe you might have to consult a professional nutritionist regarding your metabolism.
How does my metabolism slow down?
A slower metabolism might be due to the following reasons:
- Genetic
- Hormonal imbalance
- Deprived sleep
- Diet problems
- Calcium deficiency
- Stress
Factors like genes cannot be changed or improved. But other factors affecting the metabolism can be improved either by eating healthy or changing the routine. All you have to do is a little effort to restart metabolism.
Restarting metabolism can be difficult at the beginning. However, incorporating a healthy lifestyle and workout into your daily routine will eventually provide you the best outcome. You must pledge to yourself to work hard to accomplish an improved metabolic rate. Each body works differently, so you must adapt and learn what technique is beneficial to you so that you can make real impactful changes to your lifestyle.
Related: How the Metabolism Burns More Fat