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All about your metabolism

What is metabolism? Simply put it is the amount of energy, or calories, your body needs to sustain itself. If your metabolism is on the high side, you are likely to

have less body fat than people with metabolism on the low side. You can see how increasing your body metabolism can help you lose weight and usually be more healthy overall.

Calories are very important for your daily life. When you eat food you must digest it. This burns calories. Your muscles use calories for maintenance. When your heart pumps you burn calories. When you sleep you consume calories.

To put it simply, if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight over time.

So, you want to raise your metabolism. How do you do that? In general, the healthier your body is, the better it will utilize the calories you consume. In fact, with proper nutrition and exercise, your body's metabolism rates can actually be increased enough to allow you to be able to eat almost anything you want, within reason of course.

People who restrict their calorie intake severely actually lower the body's metabolism though, and this is a phenomenon many people have a difficult time understanding or believing. When you severely restrict your caloric intake, the body automatically decreases its energy expenditures to the bare minimum, because it thinks you're starving. So one easy way to start boosting your metabolism, is to continuously feed your body.

When we say continuously feed your body, we don't mean that you should nibble on junk food all day long. You should eat every three to four hours, but it should be more healthy foods which force your body to work harder when processing them.

Protein for instance, takes more work for your body to digest and process. Many raw fruits and vegetables are the same. And when the foods you eat force your body to work harder at processing them, you automatically boost your metabolism just with that one small change.

Exercise is another way to boost your metabolism, particularly if you build and tone your body's muscles. Muscles take more energy for the body to maintain, so you automatically burn more calories, and have a higher metabolism, when you have more toned muscle on your body.

Boosting your metabolism not only helps you lose weight though, it also helps give you more energy. Essentially when you start working to increase your body's metabolism, you are teaching it that you need more energy throughout the day. And since it's using more energy to keep you maintained, it will step up the process and actually provide you with more energy too.

Note: Some statements in this article may not be approved by the FDA. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as professional medical advice.

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