How To Increase Metabolism For Weight Loss? Do These 6 Tips To Increase Your Metabolism And Lose Weight

Hi guys! My name is Isaac and I’m the owner of this website. As someone that have been a skinny-fat guy for all my adult life, I’ve been trying to reduce my weight in order to get the body that I desire.

I’ve done countless diet and exercise plans over the years, so much so I can say I’ve tried all of them.

It was not until I met The 2 Week Diet Plan that my body turned to a new phase as I’ve finally able to reduce my body weight and lower my body fat percentage to below 20% (a huge accomplishment for a guy that always had his body fat in the high 20s% and low 30s% all his life!).

In this article, I’m going to list out the top 6 tips that I’ve learned from The 2 Week Diet Plan on how you can increase your metabolism for weight loss.

1. Move Your Body
2. Weight Resistance Training To Build Muscles
3. Exercise On An Empty Stomach
4. Eat More Protein
5. Drink Coffee To Boost Metabolism
6. Get Enough Sleep

 

Metabolism is a natural process in a human body which involves breaking down nutrients to release energy and building new cells.

It’s one of the hot topic among those seeking to lose weight as it’s an energy releasing process and can help with weight loss.

The number one rule in losing weight is to burn off more energy than the food that we consume. And metabolism is the key component for energy burning.

Contrary to what most people think, metabolism is a constant process in our body and not just happens when you’re exercising.

Our body is constantly breaking down energy for all the organs to function properly. It’s also continuously repairing and building new cells, a process which uses this energy too.

Metabolism is also related to many factors such as gender (males burn off more energy than females), age, daily activity levels and genetic. I’m quite sure you’ve met one guy that can just eat lots of food without gaining any fat right?

Another thing that I want to inform is about the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), which is a term for the energy used by our body just to keep us alive.

Also called as resting metabolism, it actually contributed the most (some estimate it to be 75%-80%) to the overall metabolism of our body.

In this post I’m going to walk through on how how to increase metabolism for weight loss.

The key is to increase the BMR as well as doing exercises that can boost your metabolism to the roof and start losing weight today!

 

1- Move Your Body

The first thing that you can do to increase your metabolism is by moving your body.

In fact, any physical activities other than you sitting on your couch watching TV is good enough for this purpose!

By moving your body and NOT sitting idly, you’re actually burning some energy. One simple rule that I advise my friends and family to do is to just get out from the house.

Here are some sample activities that you can do:

1. Take a walk in the park
2. Go shopping (yes, even going shopping can do the trick)
3. Visit friends
4. Tend to your lawn/garden

 

As you can see, these activities are hardly called “exercise” but it serve the purpose of moving your body to burn some calories.

Of course, a proper exercise where you’re sweating such as jogging, marathon or swimming is better option. But, there’s another type of exercise that I believe is a much better choice which brings me to my next tips.

 

2- Weight Resistance Training To Build Muscles

Not all exercises are the same. For example, yoga can be categorize as an exercise but it won’t increase your metabolism much.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good workout to stretch your body and relieve nagging pains but it won’t burn as much calories as the traditional exercise that make you sweat profusely will.

While many people recommend cardiovascular exercises (e.g jogging, swimming, bicycling, etc) to lose weight, I believe these exercises are not the best choice for those that want to increase his/her metabolism.

No doubt that cardiovascular exercises will make you sweat and is great for avoiding heart diseases, but in terms of overall body muscular development, it falls short against weight resistance training.

The reason is cardiovascular exercises tend to develop the legs for endurance type of activity and it won’t necessarily make the muscles bigger.

Weight resistance training, on the other hand, will make the muscles bigger while also can burn the same amount of calorie.

But why do we want to make the muscles bigger?

Because a bigger muscle will need more energy to maintain. It is estimated that every pound of muscle requires 50 to 100 kcal for the body to maintain. Thus, more muscles in our body will increase our metabolism.

In terms of WHAT resistance training to do, my recommendation is to go for the compound exercises that work the big muscles groups in one go. Here are some of my favorite exercises:

1. Bench press
2. Shoulder/military press
3. Squat
4. Pull up
5. Back row

As you can see, the exercises above target the whole muscles in our body comprising of the big 3 groups – chest, back and legs.

Doing these exercises will burn calories as well as making sure your whole body muscles’ are developed. Bigger muscles in these areas will then increase your metabolism even at its BMR/resting phase.

Besides, wouldn’t it look better if you have more muscles on you when your weight has trimmed off? =)

 

3- Exercise On An Empty Stomach

Another tips that I really like to do is to exercise on an empty stomach. The easiest way to do this is to exercise in the morning prior to your breakfast.

It’s a relatively unknown fact that we’re actually fasting when we go to sleep every night.

Suppose your last dinner is at 8 pm, it means you will be fasting (or not eating) for 12 hours if you’re having your breakfast at 8 am the next day.

After our last meal, the insulin level in our bloodstream will drop. What happens is the body will notice there is reduces glucose in our bloodstream and this prompted it to tap into the reserve energy from glycogen stored in our liver.

Once that is finished, our body will then have to get more energy by mobilizing fats from our fat cells. All of this happens as long as we’re not eating or drinking anything that contain calories in it.

So by exercising on an empty stomach in the morning, we can turbo-charged this fat mobilization for greater weight loss.

By the way in case you’re afraid that you will be very tired to exercise on an empty stomach, you can drink some coffee beforehand.

Coffee is a stimulant that can provide burst of energy without itself containing hardly any calorie (how wondrous!).

Drinking plenty of water will also do the trick based on my personal experience.

 

4- Eat More Protein

While most people placed carbohydrate as their number one energy source, protein is actually a better choice, especially if you’re looking to lose some weight.

One reason for this is our body needs more energy to digest protein compared to carbohydrate and fat.

It is estimated that our body will use up to 20%-30% of calorie inside protein just to digest it, compared to carb (5%-10%) and fat (0%-3%).

This is can make huge difference in our weight losing effort as the extra 10%-20% will happen instantaneously without us having to do anything.

Besides, a diet low in carb and high in fat is one of the better diet anyone looking to lose weight should do.

As I’ve written previously here, carbohydrate is actually not as useful to our body as protein is. Protein is kinda like a 2-in-1 macro-nutrient as it can provide energy while also an important source of amino acids that’s important for our body cells.

The same can’t be said of carbohydrates that can only be used as energy source only (while also spiking insulin, which is not a good thing for us!).

Yes, carbs also have fiber and minerals but it pales in comparison to the amount of fiber and vitamins/minerals that leafy green vegetables will provide.

 

5- Drink Coffee To Boost Metabolism

One of the most powerful natural stimulant is the world’s most famous drink – coffee. Millions love its bitterness and caffeine content which have powerful impact on our energy and concentration.

But do you know that it can also boost metabolism? Studies have shown that the caffeine in coffee can boost metabolism by 3% up to 11% and this is definitely something that we must take advantage off!

I prefer to drink coffee early in the morning or a few hours prior to lunch (if I’m doing intermittent fasting by skipping breakfast) on an empty stomach.

Doing this will serve two purposes: giving me a jolt of energy when my energy level dipped due to fasting and also boosts my fat burning processes.

However, I don’t like to drink coffee (or tea, etc.) after meals or when my stomach is full as I don’t sense any benefit from doing so. For me, plain, room-temperature water is sufficient and is the best drink for my meals.

By the way, I’d strongly suggest to limit your coffee consumption to maximum of 400 mg caffeine per day (or around 5 cups of coffee).

Drinking more than that on a constant basis will cause over dependence of your body to caffeine and this might lead to various problems such as the famous caffeine jitters (where your body becomes too stimulated from all the caffeine).

Headaches, nervousness, upset stomach, heart palpitations (or fast heartbeat), muscle spams and sleep problem might be the symptoms of someone that drinks too much coffee.

As everything in life, the key is in moderation!

 

6- Get Enough Sleep

This is something that I’m also still working on, get 7-8 hours of quality sleep to ensure your metabolism is at optimum level. Surprisingly, this is actually not normal with all the adults that I know.

Due to the hectic life most adults have – trying to juggle between family, career, social life, hobby – most adults have less than 7 hours of sleep. I’ve personally known those that only make do with 5 hours of daily sleep.

Quality sleep (means you’re ACTUALLY sleeping and not just rolling on the bed) is a huge factor on metabolism. When we sleep, our body rests and repairs itself and this is very crucial especially if you’re doing lots of exercise.

As I’ve mentioned above, a full body weight resistance training to build muscles is a very good method not only to increase metabolism during the workout, but also to increase our lean muscle mass which will burn more energy just by being there. Thus, sleeping is required to make sure these muscles are being built properly.

In addition to this, your metabolism actually slows down when you don’t get enough sleep. This is the result of the internal nervous system that try to conserve energy because of the sleep deprivation.

If you have problem to sleep, you can try these tips that I’ve personally used to get a more quality sleep:

1. Don’t use any electronic devices (phone, laptop, tv, etc) a few hours before bed time as the blue light from these devices will keep your brain awake
2. Don’t drink water before bed time so that you won’t need to get up just to go to toilet
3. DON’T drink any caffeine (coffee, tea) after 6-8 pm. For reasons that are obvious, caffeine will give you that energy jolt which will keep you awake..
4. Eliminate completely (or minimize if you can’t) sources of light and sound in the bedroom
5. Clear out your mind when you’re lying on your bed and stop thinking about anything (what to do tomorrow, etc.). This is a very important step to get to sleep as fast as possible once you’ve laid on your bed

 

I Highly Recommend The 2 Week Diet Plan If You Want To Learn To Lose Weight As Fast As Possible

While high metabolism is a key element to lose weight, you should also remember that it’s only one part of the equation. The other part is diet, or the amount of food and calorie consumed.

A high metabolism with the same or higher calorie consumption means you will never lose weight and could even increase your weight!.

Which is why it’s equally important (or some people say more important) to ensure your diet is clean and create a calorie deficit over time for fast weight loss.

If you’re interested on how to reduce your calorie and lose weight fast, then I highly recommend that you get The 2 Week Diet Plan which promised at least 6 pounds of weight loss in just 2 weeks.

I’ve personally used it and managed to drop 8 pounds in 2 weeks! Surely, the result will vary but with the principles of weight loss that you can learn from this ebook, I really believe anyone can lose their weight provided they put in the effort.

It’s also one of the very good value for money program out there at just $37 retail price. The huge information inside it about how our body works, what to do to lose weight, exercises that you need to do and the day-to-day diet plan for 14 days are worth lots more than what it is.

With the kind of result that I got from doing the diet plan, I’m pretty sure it will be beneficial to you too.

 

By the way, I picked the ebook up for $27, a $10 discount off its usual retail price. You can check this link and see if the discount is still there =) 

 

Conclusion

Metabolism is very important for weight loss and it can easily be increased by using the 6 tips above. While exercise is something that can greatly increased metabolism, we can also do some other things such as drinking coffee, sleep better and eating more protein to increase metabolism passively.

Because of our modern sedentary lifestyle, we’re not moving around as much as we should be and this is the main reason why most adults have low metabolism.

That, and coupled with an unhealthy diet filled with fast foods and junk foods are the main reasons why most adults are not in a good physical shape.

I hope with this article, you’ll be able to increase your metabolism in an effective way and help with your effort to lose weight.

 

I hope you have learnt a lot on how to increase metabolism for weight loss from this article. Do let me know if you have any questions regarding it.

I love to hear what you think about this article =)

Till next time.
Cheers!