How to Boost Your Metabolism

What is Metabolism?

Metabolism is the process through which the food you ingest gets converted into energy. Every time you eat, a set of chemical reactions in your body’s cells breaks down the food and turns it into energy.

Energy Balance

To fully understand how metabolism works, we must begin with the fundamental law of energy balance. Your body needs a certain amount of energy (calories) to stay alive. Your body needs additional energy to move around. You can get this energy from food, or you can retrieve it from stored energy (fat tissue). If you take in more energy than your body expends, you will theoretically gain weight. If you take in less energy than your body expends, you will theoretically lose weight. This is what’s know as the Energy Balance Equation.

When Theory Does Not Match Reality

The Energy Balance Equation is a law of physics, it’s just the way the world works. It can reliably be used to predict how much weight a person will gain or lose over time. However, when it comes to building the body of your dreams, it does not paint the full picture.

The Energy Balance Equation can be used to predict body weight, but it does not address body composition (i.e. the way you look), which is determined by a variety of factors, such as age, genetics, hormonal levels, macronutrient intake (especially protein), exercise style / type / intensity, and medications.

The bottom line is, “energy in vs. energy out” is a lot more complicated than it looks. In short, “energy in” and “energy out” are not mutually exclusive entities. When you change “energy in,” you will affect “energy out” and vice versa. Eating less and moving more is a good start, but it’s not enough. It does not take into account all the additional complex factors that make up “energy in” and “energy out.”

So, let’s take a deeper look at “energy in” and “energy out.”

Energy In

People often estimate the “energy in” part of the Energy Balance Equation by counting calories. This approach does work for many people, but there are a couple of flaws to be aware of…

First of all, food labels are often wrong. The way food manufacturers come up with calorie and nutrient estimates is incredibly complex and often inaccurate. Moreover, the FDA actually allows food labels to be off by as much as 20% in either direction.

The other flaw is, the amount of calories a food contains is often not the same amount of calories your body absorbs, stores, and/or uses. Your body has to break down, digest, and process the food you ingest, and the way your body does this will change depending on the types of foods. For example, you will absorb less calories from whole, natural, minimally processed foods because they’re harder to digest. You will absorb more calories from highly processed foods because they’re easier to digest (the more processed a food is, the less digestion that needs to occur). You will also absorb more calories from foods that are cooked, chopped, soaked, and/or blended because those processes break down plant and animal cells, increasing their bioavailability.

Energy Out

The “energy out” part of the Energy Balance Equation can essentially be thought of as how many calories your body is burning. Remember, your body burns calories to simply stay alive, and it burns additional calories for daily movement.

There are four key components of “energy out.”

Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): The amount of calories you burn each day at rest, just to breathe, think, and live. This represents roughly 60% of your “energy out” and depends on weight, body composition, sex, age, and genetics.

Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): The calories you burn eating, digesting, and processing food. This represents roughly 5-10% of your “energy out.” You will burn more calories digesting minimally processed whole foods compared to highly processed foods.

Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT): The calories you burn participating in dedicated physical activity.

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): The calories you burn through fidgeting, staying upright, and all other physical activities except purposeful exercise

Energy Out = RMR + TEF + EAT + NEAT

As you can see, there are multiple variables that make up “energy in” and “energy out,” thereby making the Energy Balance Equation far more complex than it looks. This makes it difficult to know or control exactly how much energy you’re taking in, absorbing, burning, and storing. Things get even crazier when you recognize that altering any one of the variables causes adjustments in other, seemingly unrelated variables. Typically, when “energy in” goes down, “energy out” will also go down accordingly. Essentially, you will burn fewer calories when you eat less.

What Causes a Slow Metabolism?

The human body is wired for survival. Relatively speaking, it wasn’t that long ago in humans’ existence that food was scarce. People had to hunt and gather their foods and they would often go several days at a time without eating. Therefore, it was beneficial for the human body to burn less calories while at rest and store excess calories as body fat so that they could be used for energy at times when there was not much to eat.

Nowadays, food is plentiful. Thankfully, most people don’t need to worry about starving. However, our bodies are still evolutionarily wired for survival. When you consistently give your body less fuel than it needs to operate, it will revert its evolutionary ways by slowing down many bodily functions in order to preserve fuel. This affects “energy out” by decreasing the thermic effect of food (TEF) because you’re eating less, decreasing your resting metabolic rate (RMR) because you weigh less, decreasing the calories you burn through exercise activity thermogenesis (EAT) since you weigh less, and decreasing the calories you burn through non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) as you eat less.

A slow metabolism is simply the body’s brilliant response to conserve energy by burning fewer calories.

The Effects of Not Eating Enough

If you have repeatedly tried to lose weight by following extremely low-calorie diets, there’s a good chance your metabolism has slowed down. Low-calorie diets may also cause any of the following symptoms: moodiness, low energy, brain fog, poor sleep, low sex drive, chronic fatigue, joint pain, inflammation, digestive issues, intense cravings, stress eating, and occasional binging.

Ultimately, a slow metabolism, combined with the effects above, make weight loss (and life overall) much harder.

How to Boost Your Metabolism

A slow metabolism simply means that your body has adapted to a very low daily intake of energy (calories). A slow metabolism will not allow you to burn fat efficiently, and excess food you consume will likely be stored as body fat. The good news is, your metabolism is not a fixed entity. You can boost your metabolism, allowing you to burn more calories while sitting around doing absolutely nothing. What follows are several tips to boost your metabolism and turn your body into a fat-burning machine!

Prioritize Resistance Training

Prioritizing resistance training is the best thing you can do to boost your metabolism. Resistance training is any form of exercise that increases muscular strength by making your muscles work against a weight or a force. Different forms of resistance training include using free weights, weight machines, resistance bands, and your own body weight. Resistance training involves breaking down muscle tissue by giving your muscles a new stimulus. This sends a “muscle-building signal” to your body so that the muscles can build back bigger and stronger. The muscle-building process requires calories – you cannot build muscle out of nothing. As you break down muscle tissue, your body will need to utilize some of the energy you are consuming for the repair process. As you build muscle, you will indirectly boost your metabolism, because muscle requires much more energy to sustain than fat. The more muscle you have, the more calories you will expend and the more fat you will burn. That is what it means to have a faster metabolism. Ultimately, resistance training allows you to eat more food without gaining body fat.

When incorporating resistance training into your exercise routine, focus on compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, lunges, presses, pulldowns, and rows. These types of movements involve multiple joints of the body. The more joints that are involved, the more muscles that are involved. On the contrary, isolation exercises involve just one joint of the body, and therefore less muscles. For example, a bicep curl involves movement of the elbow joint only. Focus the majority of your time and energy on compound movements, as they will produce the largest “muscle-building signal,” and therefore have the largest metabolism-boosting effect.

In following this approach, your main goal should be to get stronger. Gaining strength will lead to building muscle, which means you’re slowly boosting your metabolism. For those new to resistance training, it’s very common to build muscle while simultaneously burning body fat. Therefore, the number on the scale might not be moving, but you’re definitely making progress if you’re getting stronger.

Aim to complete 2-3 full-body strength training workouts each week. Pick several compound exercises and complete each exercise for 8-12 reps with a weight that is challenging but allows you to maintain good form. Aim for 3 sets of each exercise with 1-2 minutes of rest in between each set. Your goal should be to do a little bit more each workout. For example, if you do barbell squats with 80 pounds for 10 reps one week, try to do 80 pounds for 11 reps the next week. Once you can comfortably do an exercise with a given weight for 12 reps, increase the weight by 5-10 pounds.

Limit Cardio

Cardio is excellent for your overall health and it should absolutely be part of a healthy lifestyle. Cardio, short for cardiovascular exercise, is any movement that increases your heart rate and increases blood circulation through the body. Doing cardio improves your heart health, and your heart is the most important muscle of your body. You burn a lot of calories doing cardio, so one might think it’s a great way to burn fat and lose weight, but think again…

Cardio requires a lot of endurance, little strength, and it requires a lot of energy. Your body is always trying to adapt to the stressors placed upon it, so when you do a lot of cardio, your body will strive to get better at endurance and become more efficient with the calories you give it so you can go longer with less energy. Your body will literally hold on to body fat to make you better at storing calories and it will become better at burning less calories. Cardio also does not require much muscular strength, so as your body strives to adapt to the demands of cardio, you actually send a signal to your body that encourages muscle loss. As you lose muscle, your metabolism will become even slower.

The best form of exercise to boost your metabolism and make fat loss easier is resistance training. Limit high-intensity forms of cardio. Instead, focus on low-intensity modalities like walking, biking, and hiking as your work to build up your metabolism while maintaining your heart health.

Fuel Your Body Adequately

In order to lose weight, you must be eating less calories than your body burns on a daily basis. However, we know that your body is great at adapting to the conditions you place upon it. When you eat too little for too long, your metabolism will slow down to preserve energy for the most important bodily functions like beating your heart, breathing, and regulating body temperature.

We now know that resistance training is one of the best ways to boost your metabolism. However, your body cannot build muscle out of thin air, it needs material to do so. Therefore, you must assure that you’re giving your body enough calories.

If you’re currently eating a very low-calorie diet, the solution is to slowly increase your calories over a period of time. This is known as “reverse dieting.” Increase your daily food intake by 50 to 100 calories at a time, and continue to eat this amount of food until your body is used to the new intake. Then, increase your calories again. Continue this process until you’re at a point in which you are comfortable with the state of your metabolism.

Depending on how much you’re currently eating, this process could take anywhere from several weeks to several months. However, if you do this the right way, slowly increasing your calories over time, your body will be able to adapt to each successive increase in calories and thereby minimize unwanted fat gain. Any weight you do gain in this process will most likely be a combination of muscle and water weight.

Eat Plenty of Protein

Part of fueling your body adequately is ensuring you’re giving your body the right type of fuel. Protein is the most important type of fuel when it comes to building muscle and boosting your metabolism. A high- protein diet maximizes muscular development and minimizes the loss of muscle tissue, both of which lead to more muscle gain.

Protein has the highest thermic effect of food (TEF) compared to the other two macronutrients, carbohydrates and fat. This means that your body burns more calories to digest and process protein. Protein is also the most satiating macronutrient, meaning it will keep you more full and help you better regulate your appetite. Diets high in protein tend to reduce food cravings.

The recommended amount of protein to consume for those with goals of building and maintaining muscle is 0.7 to 1.0 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, you should aim for 115 to 150 grams of protein per day.

If you prefer not to track your protein by the gram, you can use your palm to estimate. A palm-size of protein is about 20 grams of protein, so for the above example, you would want to aim for 6-8 palm-sized servings of protein per day.

Some of the best sources of protein are: chicken, turkey, beef, bison, lamb, eggs, tuna, cod, salmon, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, and whey protein.

Do Not Be Afraid of Carbs or Fat

Although protein is the most important macronutrient, carbohydrates and fats still serve very important roles in the body. Any diet that recommends drastically reducing either of these two macronutrients (such as the keto diet or low-fat diet) will lead to deficiencies and food cravings, and will not be sustainable long-term.

Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred energy source. They will fuel exercise, boost leptin (an important hormone that signals fullness in the body), maintain sex hormones, and prevent feelings of deprivation. The best sources of carbohydrates are whole-grains, rice, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables. Prioritize fruits and vegetables, as they are full of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, water, and fiber to help you fill up during meals, stay full between meals, keep you healthy, and recover from your workouts.

Fats secrete hormones, boost the immune system, prevent excess inflammation, and make food taste great. The best sources of fats are olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, butter, avocado, coconut, nuts, seeds and nut butters.

Sleep

Sleep is the best drug on the market. It is just as important as exercise and nutrition. You could have a perfect diet and fitness plan, but if you neglect sleep, you will not make the progress you are looking for.

Poor sleep has been linked to weight gain and obesity. When you are tired, you tend to make worse decisions, particularly with food choices. Sleep deprivation also affects the appetite hormones by increasing ghrelin (the hunger hormone) and decreasing leptin (the fullness hormone).

Moreover, a lot of the body’s repair processes, including building muscle, occurs during sleep. Therefore, getting plenty of high quality sleep is the ticket to a lean and healthy physique.

The general recommendation is 7-9 hours of high quality, uninterrupted sleep. To ensure you are able to get this amount of sleep, consider adopting an evening routine to get your body ready for sleep. Some things you might do as part of an evening routine could be taking a warm bath, drinking tea, turning off all electronics an hour before bed, and a period of stretching and deep breathing.

Most importantly, try to establish a consistent sleep schedule and stick to it every day, including weekends. When your circadian rhythm is functioning properly, it will be much easier to get consistent, high quality sleep. If you are not consistent with your sleep schedule, you will likely find it hard to fall asleep some nights and may not feel well rested upon waking in the morning.

Manage Stress

Stress is an essential part of life. When managed properly, stress can move us forward and force us to adapt. When we let stress take over our lives, though, things go bad.

Stress can negatively affect your metabolism. When you are in a state of stress, your body will release cortisol to help the body access energy to deal with the stressful event. When cortisol is released too often, cortisol levels may remain elevated. Elevated cortisol levels have been linked to higher levels of visceral fat (belly fat that surrounds your internal organs) and muscle tissue can break down. High stress levels have also been linked to food cravings, decreased motivation to exercise, and emotional eating.

To better deal with stress, consider incorporating any of the following activities: daily activity, getting plenty of high quality sleep, meditation, journaling, prayer, yoga, therapy, improved time management, spending time with loved ones, reducing your intake of caffeine and alcohol, positive affirmations, and acts of self-love.

Hydrate

Approximately 60% of your body weight is water. The body uses water in every single one of its cells, organs, and tissues to help regulate temperature and maintain other bodily functions. It is essential in metabolism, as it assists in the breakdown and digestion of food, nutrient transport and waste removal. Aim to consume at least half your body weight in ounces of water on a daily basis.

Reduce Sugar Intake

Eating too much sugar can cause blood glucose levels to remain chronically high. Over time, this can impair the function of insulin, a hormone that helps to keep your blood sugar in check. If your body becomes resistant to insulin, you will not be able to properly convert food into energy, which will slow down your metabolism and may lead to diabetes. Try to avoid an excessive intake of sugar, particularly added sugars in processed foods.

Limit Alcohol

Your body views alcohol as a toxin. When you consume alcohol, your body will prioritize metabolizing alcohol at the expense of other nutrients. This slows down the breakdown of other nutrients like carbs and fats, increasing the chances that your body stores some of the excess as body fat.

Conclusion

Boosting your metabolism will allow your body to burn more calories at rest. This will allow you to maintain your weight while eating more food and make it much easier for you to burn fat. To boost your metabolism, build an exercise routine that prioritizes resistance training centered around compound movements, and limit how much cardio you do. Make sure you fuel your body adequately with plenty of lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats, and cut down on your intake of added sugars. Drink a bunch of water, and try to avoid drinking too much alcohol. Make sure you get ample rest and recovery by getting plenty of high-quality sleep every night and managing stress as best as you can.