Feeling sluggish and low on energy? Do you feel like you work and work toward your weight loss goal and never seem to make any dramatic improvement?

You could be suffering from a slow metabolism. This does not have to destroy your weight loss efforts. You can dramatically improve your metabolism and boost energy without taking supplements.

Your metabolism simply refers to the conversion of food to usable energy by the body. It is the biological process by which energy is extracted from food or how fast or slowly the body burns calories.

A few steps you can take to improve your metabolism naturally are:

1. Drink Cold Water - Water is great to drink and you should be drinking a minimum of 8 to 10, glasses daily, of course, more is better. It will help increase your metabolism and remove toxins and fat. Drinking ice cold water before meals will shrink your stomach so you feel full quicker, and the cold water also helps to increase the metabolism.

2. Eat Every Three Hours - Eat a small balanced meal every three hours, including snacks. Meals and snacks should be balance, meaning they should contain a complete protein, carbohydrates, as well as natural fat. Failure to eat consistently can lead to a slower metabolism and fat storage. Skipping meals slows down your metabolism. To ignite weight loss you need to be consuming the right foods throughout the day in a balanced manner.

3. Don’t Skip Breakfast - Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, as it gets your metabolism running in high gear. You wouldn’t drive to work on an empty tank and you shouldn’t start your day without adequate nourishment. Your first meal sets your metabolism for the day and keeps it going as long as you eat every three hours. If you get up early and eat a late breakfast, you missed out on several hours of burning calories.

4. Don’t Fear Fat - Fat has a bad rep. Many think fat makes you fat. This is false. The type of fat and how much fat you eat impact your body fat composition. Fat is needed by the body. Those who follow a very low-fat diet have a harder time ridding their body of fat. Choose natural healthy fats such as olive oil, avocados, various nuts, flax, and natural peanut butter.

5. Omit Trans Fat - Trans fat is the bad fat, the cause of weight gain, low energy, depression, cancer, and heart disease. You will never get the body you desire by eating “healthy” fast food, frozen dinners, etc. If it’s man-made, it’s not the best choice. Go with the foods Mother Nature provided to meet your fat loss goals.

6. Be Active Daily - Stay active at least six days a week. You can easily cycle cardio and weight training so it’s balanced and not overbearing. In addition to that, take the stairs when possible or park further out to get that little bit of extra movement and keep the heart and lungs working optimally. Studies show little movements such as tapping your toes while working also helps to burn calories.

7. Do Cardiovascular Exercise - Cardio is heart and lung healthy. It also burns calories. Doing cardio first thing in the morning on an empty can tap into fat stores and keeps the body burning calories at a high rate for about an hour after cardio is finished. If you fail to eat adequately daily, this can work against you. Doing morning cardio on very low calorie die can burn muscle. Another good time to incorporate cardio is in the evening, after your last meal. This allows you to burn calories so you are not sleeping on them. You do not have to implement a morning and evening session, choose one or the other or cycle between the two to prevent staleness and boredom.

8. HIIT It - Blend some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into your cardiovascular program from time to time to give your body and metabolism a good shock. The body is programmed to adapt. Therefore, the same cardio day in and day out can become stale real fast. Take one or two days a week and implement some HIIT to give the body an added shock.

9. Weight Train - Resistance training builds muscle, which is metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you acquire, the faster your metabolism. Muscle will put curves in the right places and allow you to eat more calories a day.

10. Listen to Your Body - Killing yourself with workouts is just as dangerous as not working out at all. Listen to your body and get proper rest. Don’t train if you are ill or just simply too tired. Training in such a state can cause more problems than it solves.

If any of the above fail to prove results in 4 to 6 weeks, there could be an underlying problem, such as a food allergy, acidic pH, sluggish thyroid, hormonal imbalance, etc. If so, I recommend searching a natural healer in your area to determine the cause and work from there. For the most part, proper diet and herbs can correct any ailments.

Karen Sessions has been in the fitness industry since 1988. She embarked on weight training to overcome an eating disorder, Anorexia Nervosa in its early stages. She overcame the eating disorder, received her personal training certificate, competed in many local bodybuilding contests, and qualified for Nationals. Since then she’s went on to write six e-books (weight loss, female bodybuilding, contest preparation, leg training, figure/fitness secrets, and cellulite removal). She writes articles for several fitness websites, as well as her own, www.theelitephysique.com, and also distributes a monthly e-newsletter. She has a very active and lively forum, filled with positive and supportive people with informative content. Karen’s sole goal is to educate others and help them apply that knowledge.

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A big mistake that lots of people make is skipping meals. They think they are not eating much so they should be losing weight. Wrong!

Your body was designed with the idea that you have to expend energy in order to get food. If you think back a hundred or more years ago, if you wanted to eat something you had to either go hunting everyday or grow your own food. And that’s a lot of work - that’s a lot of physical activity. And even though we no longer have to do this, it doesn’t change the fact that our bodies are still designed this way. So when you skip a meal, your body actually thinks that you’re out in the wild and, for whatever reason, food is hard to come by. This is a built in survival mechanism that all of us have - it’s built in. So when your body thinks food is hard to find, it does two things to protect you from starving. First it slows your metabolism causing your body to slow down and burn less fat. Second the meal you eat after you skip a meal will be converted almost entirely to fat and stored - to protect you from starving. So if you skip breakfast, almost all of what you eat for lunch is converted to fat. We think we’re taking in less food but in reality were causing our bodies to store fat.

Your metabolism is totally controllable by you. You can lose weight easily If you speed your metabolism up naturally and safely.

Increasing your lean muscle mass enables your body to burn more fat as it takes more effort to sustain muscle than it does fat. Therefore, the more lean muscle mass you have, the faster your metabolism is likely to be. Therefore, your exercise regime should include not only fat burning exercises but also some muscle building exercise. Women should note that this does not mean you have to get ‘beefy’ but just tone up your muscles.

Protein also plays an important part in this process. Women should generally consume about 100 grams of protein per day and men 150 grams. This can be quite difficult to achieve unless you take a protein supplement. You then know exactly how much protein you are consuming and it is much easier to control.

So the message is:

1. Don’t skip meals - you will end up putting on weight.

2. Build lean muscle mass by doing a combination of weight training as well as fat burning exercises.

3. Make sure you are consuming the right amount of protein per day to aid in building lean muscle mass.

Copyright 2005 Sheridan Woodcroft

Sheridan Woodcroft is a personal weight management and health and nutrition mentor. You can visit her website to find out more about a how, with a few simple changes, you can boost your metabolism and turn your body into a fat burning machine and lose weight without exercising http://www.WEIGHTLOSS-4U-PERMANENTLY.COM/?refid=article-31879

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We’ve all seen the folks that are able to eat anything they want and not gain a pound, and despite our protests we do feel a tinge of jealousy. Blame it on the metabolism, they always say . . . but how is it that some metabolisms race like they’re winning the Kentucky Derby while others refuse to get out of the easy chair regardless of our efforts to boost them? If you are privileged enough to be blessed with a metabolism that works at snail speed, a few tips might give it the little kick it needs.

Resting metabolic rate, also basal metabolic rate, is the number of calories you would burn in a day without any activity at all and accounts for about two-thirds of energy expended every day. Boosting this rate will help to improve how quickly you burn calories and lose weight.

1) Eat more frequently

Ensures that your metabolism doesn’t slow down between meals to conserve energy

2) Consume more protein

Helps you to use more energy while resting. Protein increases your resting metabolic rate by as much as 2 to 3 times. It also helps to stabilizie the insulin secreted into your bloodstream, a process that has an effect on metabolism. Requires 25% more energy to digest. Jeff Hampl, PhD, RD, and
spokesman for the American Dietetic Association: “Protein is made up mainly of amino acids, which are harder for your body to break down [than fat and carbs], so you burn more calories getting rid of them.”

3) Hot peppers

Hot peppers temporarily increase your metabolic rate and also help you to feel more full so you eat less. They are thought to raise metabolism by up to 50% for three hours after eating, because they increase the heart rate.

4) Strength training

Every pound of muscle gained, extra 35-50 calories burned a day. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat or bone.

5) Avoid dieting

Dieting forces the body into starvation mode which slows down the metabolism to conserve energy and calories.

6) Supplement with a good multi-vitamin

Metabolism is made up of many chemical reactions that are made more efficient with proper nutrient intake.

7) Eat breakfast

It’s very important to eat a solid breakfast each morning to get your metabolism started after the night-long fast–otherwise, it will stay slow all
day.

Get those ZZZs

Sleep deprivation slows down your metabolism because your body tries to conserve your energy

9) Turn down the thermostat

Research shows that being cold can increase your metabolism by up to 20%

10) Drink water

All body processes need it to function properly, including metabolism

11) Evening walk

Metabolism naturally slows down at night…walking increases it and may keep it up for two to three hours

12) Fidget

Every little bit of movement helps! If you are stuck at a desk all day, fidgeting helps to burn more calories than merely sitting.

13) Incorporate cardio

An intense cardio workout will elevate your metabolic rate for several hours after you finish.

Brianna Stanley owns and operates a successful alternative health company. To find out more about her products and how she can help you, or to sign up for a free health secrets newsletter, visit http://www.thepainfreepage.com

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