5 Tips to Supercharge your Metabolism
By Nutritionist: Tanya Agard CNP, NWS, PT, BA
Despite what you may have heard, the speed of your metabolism is not a direct product of your genes. Your lifestyle and habits play a huge role in whether your metabolism is working for you — or against you. Habits like exercise, eating more protein, and incorporating more herbs and spices into your diet, have all been shown to give your metabolism a boost.
Check out these 5 tips to supercharge your metabolism for more energy and to help with weight loss.
1. Pump Up the Protein
Protein is beneficial for keeping energy and blood sugar stable, while also helping build calorie-burning lean muscle mass.
The body converts amino acids from the protein in your diet to new muscle tissue (process called protein synthesis). As we age past 50, the liver decreases production of the hormone called insulin. This in turn, slows down the process of protein syntheses.
To help accommodate this shift, adults 50+ require 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. You should aim to get 20-30 grams of protein at each meal and the rest in snacks.
Eating foods with protein, naturally forces your body to use up more calories during the digestion process.
Great sources of PROTEIN include: meat, eggs, lentils, black beans, nuts, seeds, veggies
2. Upgrade Your Grains
Switch out white flour and white rice for whole grains, quinoa, brown or wild rice.
Whole grains contain all the parts of the kernel including the tougher, harder to digest bits resulting in your body uses more energy to break them down.
3. Fuel With Fat
Taking a regular dose of Omega 3 Fatty Acids will help increase your muscle protein synthesis. Adults should aim for a 4oz serving of fatty fish like herring, mackerel, salmon or tuna 3 times per week.
Vegetarian sources include flaxseed, soybeans, and walnuts.
4. Drink Up
Researchers found that people who consume 2 cups of room temperature water cranked up their resting metabolism rates about 30%, in part because their bodies expended energy heating the body to body temperature. This means that drinking just over 6 cups of water per day could help you burn an extra 50 calories per day.
Great sources of hydration include: coconut water (unsweetened), leafy greens, fruits such as watermelon, strawberries, grapefruit and herbal teas.
5. Season Smarter
Naturally warming foods like cayenne pepper, chili and other spicy ingredients, are known to increase heat in the body thanks to an active compound called capsaicin. Get the fat-fighting benefits by incorporating more red peppers, cayenne, jalapeños, habaneros or Tabasco into your diet.
Black pepper contains the alkaloid piperine, which can help speed up metabolism. Try reaching for the pepper mill when you’d normally use salt; you’ll boost your metabolism and reduce your sodium intake. If you want to multiply black pepper’s metabolism-boosting effect, try adding it to tomato juice. Tomatoes contain lycopene, an antioxidant that helps protect your mitochondria.
Other warming spices like cinnamon and ginger aid in lipid oxidation, which is the process of burning fat for energy; highly desirable when weight loss is the goal. These antioxidant-packed spices also might help decrease appetite and slow the growth of fat cells.
Other great spices to incorporate into your diet are Cumin and Ginger. Cumin can help your body absorb and digest fats. Ginger can help increase the number of calories your body uses while digesting food·
For a metabolism-boosting meal, slice fresh ginger and stir-fry it with vegetables. Ginger not only aids in digestion but can also increase metabolic rates as much as 20 percent after eating.
Great ways to add more spices into your life, add them into stir fry’s, soups, stews, and to your meat when BBQ’ing.
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