The following tips will help you to increase your metabolism. When you increase your metabolism, there are many benefits for your body and mind. You can lose weight and also shed the stubborn body and belly fat.

Build some muscle

If you want to increase your metabolism, you will need to build some muscle. You need lean muscle mass because that will help you to increase your metabolism. You need energy to build, use and maintain muscle because muscle is made up of metabolically active tissue. You can develop muscle with weight training. Besides helping you to build muscle, weight training will also help you to lose fat.

Eat protein

You need to eat more protein, especially at breakfast. If you want to increase your metabolism, burn more calories, reduce fat and body weight, you will need loss of protein. You should not eat calorie laden foods such as doughnuts, cereals, waffles etc. in your breakfast. If you do that, it will reduce your metabolism because high sugar food will spike and crash your blood sugar. You need a protein rich breakfast which may include lean steak, eggs and other things that contain lots of protein. Since protein will need lots of energy for breakdown and digestion, your metabolism will work faster. When you eat protein in your breakfast besides improving your metabolism, it will also reduce the possibility of consuming more calories during the day.

HIIT training

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is something in which you use high intensity during your training and then use periods of recovery in between. It is more effective than and normal cardio because during a small period HIIT can burn same amount of calories that you burn during a long, slow cardio session. It is better than cardio because once you complete your cardio session, you do not burn any more calories but in case of HIIT, you will continue burning calories even 36 hours after your workout ended. To do an HIIT exercise, you need to do an activity almost all out for 30 seconds and then allow a recovery period of 90 seconds. You should repeat this set nine more times. So, within 20 minutes you can increase your metabolism and can keep it that way for next day and half.

Drink water

Drinking water can help you to increase your metabolism. Water is very important in the digestive process. If you do not drink the necessary amount of water, your body will not be able to extract all the nutrients from the food. If you do not drink enough water, your metabolic rate will go down. Your metabolism will not run smoothly without water and it may stop completely. You will need 2 to 3 litres of water every day if you are not training and more water on the days when you are training. The amount will depend on your level of activity.

And whole foods

Whole foods are good for you, especially if you want to increase your metabolism. Since you need energy to breakdown nutrients, you burn calories for the energy necessary. It is called as Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). When you eat unprocessed whole foods like fish, meat, vegetables and fruits, you are increasing TEF and so you will use more calories for digestion of such foods.

You need to avoid liquid calories as well. Do not consume more calorie heavy drinks and over processed foods because they do not need much energy in digestion and they can increase your blood sugar and add more fat to different parts of your body.

References

1. Bodyweight Surge
2. Can you boost your metabolism?
3 Metabolism