To burn more calories and lose weight faster, your need to get the most of your metabolism level! Metabolic rate is the motor of your body in burning calories that you get from foods you eat in the diet. If it goes slow down, it can be a nightmare for your weight loss goal. For people in their 20s, it may be not a big problem. But if you are now over 30, you need to maintain it carefully because naturally it decreases as you age.
Before going to the answer of this question, you may wonder about what actually metabolism is! Medically, it is a term used to describe the process of when your body converts any food that contains calories to become energy. This energy is needed to support all of your activity, including at rest (the basic functions of your body to keep survive such as for growing & repairing cells of the body, circulating blood, breathing, etc).
The kind of metabolic rate to supply energy at rest is called the resting metabolic rate (RMR) or medically called basal metabolic rate (BMR).
About almost 75 percent of the calories from foods that you consume in diet is used in BMR. And the rest is used to supply energy for your daily activities.
Therefore, if you are physically inactive, your daily calories requirement should be lower than when you are physically active.
So, now we get the formula. If you want to control your weight, your calories input (the amounts of calories that you take in from the diet) should be equal to your calories output (the amounts of calories that you need to burn either in BMR or in supporting your daily activities).
And if you need to lose weight faster – you have to reduce your calories input and increase your calories output so thus there will be greater amounts of calories output than calories input.
What happen when your metabolism goes slow down and doesn’t work as well as it should be? It can affects both in your BMR and burning calories for your daily activities.
Overall, decreased metabolism means decreased ability of your body in burning calories. Your body will work slower to burn calories so thus there will be more excessive calories that not burned and can be stored as ‘fat’. As a result, you are easier to gain weight and also more difficult to lose weight.
The answer may vary from person to person. But if you are looking for the best result for your weight loss goal or just to maintain your weight, it’s much better to always get the most of yours.
Although typically metabolism in teenager or young adults is much better than in older adults (over 35), there are also some factors that can make the metabolic rate decreases faster than it should.
The following are some risk factors that can increase your risk of getting decreased metabolism faster:
- Age – the metabolic rate naturally decreases as we get older, as noted before (it is unchangeable risk factor).
- Gender (unchangeable risk factor). Typically, women have slower metabolisms than men.
- Physically inactive (changeable risk factor). If you don’t build enough lean muscles of your entire weight, this can affect the level of your metabolic rate. Individuals with moderately active are more likely to have better metabolic rate than physically inactive individuals. And those with physically active tend to have better metabolic rate than moderately active individuals.
- Poor sleeping (changeable risk factor).
- Poor in diet (changeable risk factor). Getting lack of certain essential nutrients from your diet in long term may affect the level of metabolic rate.
- Poor eating habits (changeable risk factor). Extremely irregular eating is bad for your glucose metabolism. It may also affect your metabolic rate in long term.
Once we get in the age of 25, the metabolic rate will gradually decline by about 5-10 percent /decade. This suggests if you don’t do anything to maintain and improve your metabolism, it can be bad for your weight control in long term.
So, now you know clearly that it’s important to get on your best level of your metabolic rate when it comes to losing weight faster. How to do it? Try some of the following tips!
Even if you have normal weight but when there is very poor in lean muscles, it can be bad for your metabolic rate (particularly true if you are now over 30s).
Therefore, it is not only about the scale of your weight. You need also to make sure that you have plenty of lean muscles if you want to get a good weight control in long term.
Exercise is not only about sweating and burning calories. It also should be regular to improve your metabolism and good for your weight control. Cardio exercises such as biking, walking, running, swimming, playing tennis, etc are great to lose calories, but you should not use cardio exercise alone when it comes to improving your metabolic rate.
For best result, you should combine cardio exercise and some strength training. Any kind of strength training can be helpful to raise your muscle mass. Take weight training at least twice a week to maintain and improve the percentage of muscle mass of your weight to keep ideal!
This is not only helpful to provide a steady energy and suppress your appetite (helpful to control your calories input), but also can help stimulate the metabolism of your body for a short period of time (helpful to raise your metabolic rate).
However, this doesn’t mean that you can get and eat all what you want. Still, you need to keep eating right (either for the kind of food or for the size portion). Choose foods high in fiber, low in saturated fats, high in protein, and high in other essential nutrients! And watch on calories – even healthy foods also have calories!
Furthermore, this also doesn’t mean for snacking. Eating more small meals throughout the day can be better if you choose some complete mini-meals with appropriate nutrients value and calories. For instance, you can choose a serving of a healthy source of protein (such as skinless breast chicken, egg, or nuts) and a serving of vegetable.
There is still no scientific evidence to confirm the effectiveness of eating more small meals throughout the day for weight loss. But some experts believe that it can be a more healthful of eating and losing weight if compared with eating 1 or 2 very large meals a day.
However, not all people can do this idea. If your goal is just for weight control, taking your 3 major meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) regularly and never skipping one of them is great enough. All of these suggestions should be in a well-balanced diet. Well-balanced diet means you need to make sure that anything you do in your diet is appropriate in size portion and nutrient value.
It is important to get plenty of sleep (either in quality and quantity) every day. This is very essential for your entire health, including for your metabolism and weight control.
When you are getting sleep deprivation, your metabolic rate doesn’t work as optimal as when you are getting plenty of sleep.