If you have been educating yourself on weight, fat, muscle, and body mass, then you know that you need to focus on fat loss and muscle gain – rather than weight loss – in order to achieve true health and fitness. What you may not know is that you need to boost your metabolic rate in order to do this efficiently. Your metabolic rate is the rate at which your body turns fuel (calories, food) into energy. The faster your metabolic rate the more energy you will have to succeed. The reason this is brought up is because if you are dealing with excess fat then you metabolism has, very likely, slowed down or just never been pushed to its potential.
It is easy to let your metabolic rate come to a screeching halt
With the ease of life today, technology, cars, fast food restaurants, and just the overall ease of access to everything, it is no wonder we are not more physically active or we eat the wrong foods. Think about it, if this stuff was not available, would you have to work harder for it; the answer is yes. It is these two factors – food and physical activity – that are crucial to a healthy metabolic rate. Without these factors we grow old, weak, frail, and fat.
As soon as people start feeling sluggish or fat they think they need to diet to feel better. While this isn’t so far from the truth, dieting in today’s sense, is not good for your metabolic rate or your health. See, dieting today means nearly starving yourself until you lose the weight you want and then go back to a “normal” eating routine. This is very confusing to your metabolism. Cutting calories forces your metabolism to slow down because 1) it doesn’t need to work so hard and 2) it thinks it needs to begin storing fuel in preparation for a famine.
This is not to say that you will not lose weight by cutting calories, chances are that you will. But, it will be the wrong kind of weight. When people cut calories – in this manner – the weight lost is typically water and muscle weight. While water weight is not a bad loss, muscle weight is. Muscle is what keeps you strong – physical and emotionally – and you need it to survive. Muscle also helps to keep your metabolic rate at healthy levels, without it your metabolic rate “starves” in a sense.
The other downside to “losing weight” in this manner is that you have learned nothing about what your body needs. Therefore, most people will go back to their unhealthy eating habits, once the weight is gone, and then wonder why they weight came back; and often times plus some. Or, on the flip side, people will continue a diet that is lacking in proper nutrients and chemicals to provide the body with proper sustenance. Either way you are killing your overall metabolic rate and your overall health.
Increase your metabolic rate naturally
One of the first things, you must do, to boost up your metabolic rate is to build a good solid foundation of lean muscle tone. There is only one way to do this and that is via a proper strength training regime. Strength training is the focus of challenging and pushing your muscles to the point that they grow. If you are looking for a good, solid foundation all you need is to fit in 2-3 sessions at 30 minutes each – every week – and you will build and tone the natural muscles that you have (you will not become a massive body-builder with this routine).
Secondly, you need to eat the right foods. Forget about eating out, boxed / processed foods, and foods are saturated in sugars and fat. These foods are killing you – literally. They also act like molasses on machine gears in the sense that they slow down your metabolic rate. Instead you need to oil your metabolism with foods like fruits, vegetables, proteins, dairy, and whole grains.
If the way you look, your health, and your body are important to you, you will begin a new lifestyle – one that starts with a healthy approach to a healthy metabolic rate. It is time to stop letting society feed you and start feeding yourself. When it comes down to it, it is common sense. Take the time to learn and implement proper lifestyle techniques into your life and you will be a whole new you before long.
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