Metabolism is the method by which your body converts food into energy. The better your metabolism, the more calories you burn, which can lead to weight loss and a healthier body. Many factors can affect your metabolism, including age, genetics, diet, exercise, and lifestyle. However, age, genetics, and certain medical conditions can cause a sluggish metabolism.
Fortunately, there are natural ways to increase your metabolism and boost your overall health. Here, we will discuss various ways to increase metabolism and boost weight loss with an expert.
Build Muscle
Build Muscle: One of the most effective ways to boost metabolism is to build muscle, as it is more metabolically active than fat, which burns more calories at rest. This means that if you have more muscle, you will burn more calories during the day, even when you’re not exercising. Resistance training, such as bodyweight exercises or weight lifting, is the most effective muscle-building method. Strength training should be done at least two to three times per week.
Eat Protein
Eat Enough Protein: Protein is a vital nutrient for building and repairing muscle, and it can also help boost metabolism. Your body works harder to break protein down and digest it, which burns more calories. Aim to eat a source of protein at every meal and snack, such as eggs, chicken, fish, tofu, or beans.
Eat Regularly
Don’t Skip Meals: Skipping meals or drastically reducing calories can actually slow down your metabolism. When you don’t eat enough, your body goes into starvation mode and tries to conserve energy by slowing down your metabolism. This makes it even harder to lose weight in the long run. Instead of skipping meals, eat three balanced meals daily and incorporate healthy snacks if needed.
Drink Water
Stay Hydrated: Getting enough water is vital for a healthy metabolism. Dehydration slows down your metabolism, so make sure to drink plenty of water. Drink eight or more glasses of water daily, if you’re exercising or in hot weather.
Spicy Foods
Eat Spicy Foods Eating spicy foods, such as chili peppers or cayenne pepper, can boost metabolism. The capsaicin in these foods has increased metabolism by up to 5% and can also help reduce appetite. Add some spice to your meals by adding hot sauce, chili flakes, or jalapenos.
Get Good Sleep
Get Enough Sleep Sleep is crucial for a healthy metabolism. Lack of sleep disrupts hormones that regulate appetite and metabolism, leading to weight gain. Get eight hours of sleep per night to support a healthy metabolism.
Exercise
Do Cardiovascular Exercises: Cardiovascular exercises, such as running, biking, or swimming, can help boost metabolism and burn calories. Do at least 30 minutes of cardio daily, five days per week. This can include jogging, cycling, brisk walking, or other activities that increase your heart rate.
Fiber
Eat Enough Fiber Eating enough fiber can help boost metabolism and promote weight loss. Fiber slows down the digestion of carbohydrates, which helps regulate blood sugar levels and reduce hunger. Eat 25 grams of fiber daily in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.
Green Tea
Drink Green Tea Green tea is a natural metabolism booster, thanks to its caffeine and antioxidant content. Drinking green tea can increase metabolism by up to 4% and can also help reduce appetite. Drink two cups of green tea daily for maximum benefits.
Lower Stress
Manage Stress Stress can negatively impact metabolism by disrupting hormones that regulate appetite and metabolism. Chronic stress leads to weight gain and other health problems. A healthy lifestyle can help manage stress, such as yoga, meditation, or deep breathing exercises.
There are several natural ways to increase your metabolism. Staying hydrated, getting enough sleep, eating protein with every meal, exercising regularly, eating spicy foods, drinking green tea, and not skipping meals can all help to boost your metabolism and promote overall health. A daily routine with these tips can increase your metabolism and help you achieve weight loss goals.
Why Does Metabolism Reduce With Aging?
NourishDoc: We are back focusing on women 40 plus. Metabolism, energy, so many of my friends said, oh my god, I don’t feel energetic anymore. I don’t know what is happening. You know, I feel fatigued. Well, what is the reason? That’s what we’re going to understand today from Abraham. Abraham is a registered dietitian focusing on women 40 to 60, weight loss, weight management, fat loss, hormonal health, gut health, and all kind of women’s issues. Thank you so much for joining me.
Dietician Abraham: Thank you for having me. So, let’s discuss the answer to the question that we always get, which reduces our metabolism as we age, and unfortunately, the attitude is yes, and there are a couple of reasons behind that; the main four that I would like to mention is, number one is, we start to lose muscle mass as we age, and that’s a big factor because muscle is a big contributor for a fat burning process, and also for enhancing our metabolism.
So, as we lose muscle mass, we also tend to burn fewer calories throughout the day. The second reason is when we have hormonal changes that happen, premenopausal, which can sometimes occur between five to 10 years before the actual menopause happens. The shift in those hormones is mainly when there is a high and low estrogen, that’s also caused that, kind of the belly fat around the belly to kind of start to appear, which is the second biggest reason.
Now the third reason is, which is not necessarily related to age, but it tends to be a statistic; the research has shown it’s more likely because of the responsibility that comes with, and many other things, we tend to sleep less as well and again, this is a very big factor. We underestimate its effect because when you lack sleep, when I say that, I mean anywhere less than six hours of sleep per day, then some hormones will be affected, affecting your overall intake.
So, this is specifically insulin resistant and cortisone, which both take part in your hunger and satiety along with ghrelin and leptin. So you want to ensure that your slip is not anything less than six hours, and usually, that’s the case; number fourth reason why we lose the metabolic facts of our burning process is because of stress which is kind of back to the first two reasons at opti-stress. So when you see the shift in your body and the hormones, they also contribute to whatever stress you already have, increasing the threshold of the strike.
How Can You Boost Metabolism For Women Over 40?
So these are the four biggest reasons why we tend to have a lower metabolic rate as we age, specifically past 40 in women. Now the next question will come, like how can we kind of reset this metabolism, which is another good question. So again, I will give you four major problems or ways to reset your metabolism. Number one, making that you have nutritionally dense and balanced food. So what I mean by that it’s keeping it simple. For every meal, let’s say we pretend we have a plate, make sure that half of your plate is based on fruits and vegetables.
The other quarter is complex carbs, like whole grain bread, brown rice, or whole wheat pasta. Well, now we also have kind of all sorts of legume pasta. So try to make it as complex carb as possible and lean protein the other quarter of your plate. This can be lean ground beef, chicken breast, or any seafood. Even if you are a vegetarian or vegan, you can keep it plant-based such as tofu, Tempe, or any legumes. So the biggest point to reset your metabolism is to make sure that every meal you have in the day is balanced.
The second one is to avoid consuming too few calories. I see this all the time, especially with the client that comes to me, like where you kind of get into combat with your weight loss by reducing further and further with the calories, and believe me, this is only going to do worse, not going to play for your favor, and that’s because, in our human evolutionary, we tend to face the mind more than full abundance and what happens is our body whenever we are eating less calorie we’ll think that oh my God we are now on scarcity in terms of the food, let’s keep those energies so that we don’t die and that’s why what happened the lower calorie you eat, the more restrictive you go, the lower you will start having burning calories, and your metabolism will go downwards.
So that’s something to be aware of because this is very common for women over 40 trying to combat weight loss with further restrictions. Make sure that you’re not super receptive to your calories. The third reason is to ensure that you’re adding some form of exercise daily; this shouldn’t be like going to the gym every day. No. It could be anything as simple as 30 minutes of a walk daily. Maybe if there are some classes you will like at the gym, let’s say it’s a Zumba class, yoga class, dance, or anything that you enjoy and would like to do, go and put that on in the day.
So, one exercise a day that’s something that will help you, and the fourth reason or the fourth factor that can help you reset your metabolism is checking your hormones. This is, unfortunately, something that we all biologically experience, and it’s very subject, so each individual has a different set of hormones and different responses to aging. So I would highly recommend that, if you check your hormones and see an imbalance, seek help from a healthcare professional. This is a big thing when it comes again to resetting your metabolism.
So, those are four points that you can make sure that you are mindful about, so you can have a metabolic reset; the final thing I will bring up here is, now, let’s say, our metabolism is good, we are aware of those stages, we don’t have issues, how can we boost it, because that’s also something that you can, again, if you be mindful of these things. I will bring up five other points on this question about how we can enhance our metabolism over the age of forty.
So number one, it comes to the balance plate but more emphasis on high protein food. So the number one reason is that protein is important for muscle mass. So, the more protein you have, the less likelihood that when you’re on a deficit, you will lose muscle as well, and why it’s important, and that’s because of many things. So, muscle mass is, as we mentioned, one of the biggest reasons you reduce your metabolism because it plays a big role in burning fat and increasing your metabolism.
The other important factor about protein is that it keeps you full because it affects your satiety hormones. And it will make you eat less without necessarily having those cravings. So that’s another benefit of having high protein. The third benefit of high protein is the thermogenic effect of degrading or digesting that protein. Now let’s pretend that if you had the protein that is 200 calories, it requires 40 calories for that food or the protein. Let’s say it’s a chicken to be digested. So you see, although you have 200 calories, forty calories are spent alone on digesting that food item. So this is the number one thing you can do to enhance your protein and metabolism.
Number two is to increase your water intake. I will advise anything between 20 to 30 ounces once you wake up in the morning and go for the cold water, and that’s because, again, our body loves to be in a homeostatic state, and when you have cold water, what happens is your core temperature will modulate in a way that this, your body temperature goes up. So, during this process, you will burn fat to generate that heat.
So, that will add five to 10% percent to your expenditure. The third reason or the third thing you can do is to make sure you have some strength training. I believe you already got why this is important because you would like to add those muscle mass and maintain the muscle mass. This is not going to help you just for the sake of increased metabolism and weight loss. But believe me, the stronger you get in muscle mass, the fragility as you age will also decline.
The longevity, as well as the quality of your life, will get because of like fall and getting fractures in the future or not being able to walk because of osteoporosis; it’s all going to subside. So, there are many benefits other than increasing muscle mass, weight loss, and metabolism when you are doing strength training. So, do that, and number four is getting great sleep. This again goes back to one of the biggest reasons why your metabolism is going down: because of something when we don’t sleep well or have sleep abbreviation, we experience insulin resistance.
So basically, insulin is a hormone in your body that regulates the sugar, signaling the cells to uptake that sugar, okay? When you are insulin resistant, this hormone will circulate in your blood without having specific effects on your cells. So, the sugar will be there, and they are not going and supplying an energy source to your blood. So, the less insulin sensitive you are or, the more resistant you are, the higher the lead you will go to gain weight because those carbs will transfer into fat. The same goes with ghrelin; it’s a hunger hormone.
Again, when the sugar is there, it’s not entering the cell; the cells are starving. It will boost more ghrelin. So, it will feel hungrier and hungrier. So, that’s why, if you noticed before, the less you sleep, the more hungry you wake up, and the same with leptin, which is your fat hormones. So, it will reduce your; basically, it will reduce the leptin hormone, which is causing the satiety hormone, right? So, it will, again, further boost your hungriness, and the fifth and last thing you would like to do is use the code to your favor.
Now, especially we are entering the winter season. So, again, this is a similar effect as drinking cold water; let’s say if you go out, have a walk in cold weather, or if you take a cold shower, you have this fidgeting effect of a little bit of shivering and also your body constantly trying to generate heat using that brown fat, that fat specifically to generate heat and burn more calories to make sure that your body temperature does not fall to your normal temperature anywhere 36 to 37.
So that way, you are burning not only because you’re walking but also while trying to maintain your body’s temperature. So these are five things you can do to boost not only have increased your metabolism but also boost your metabolism to recap it. So high protein intake, increasing your water intake, especially cold water, early morning, 20, 30 ounces, making sure that you’re having some form of strength training.
You don’t have to do a daily basis, three days a week, it’s fantastic; getting a great anywhere between seven to nine hours is a great goal, and fifth is using the cold like a cold shower or going out in the cold weather, and walking are some factors those will help you with increasing and boosting your metabolism. So I hope this sheds some light on your concern about why our metabolism degrades as we age and how we can maintain and enhance it.
Protein For Increasing Metabolism
NourishDoc: It’s excellent the way you summarize very clearly each of the three questions. I have a final question before we wrap up today; you are a registered dietitian. This question is that you talked about the protein intake increasing the protein intake. Now some women out there cannot eat chicken or egg or, you know, like a plant-based or vegetarian. What are your recommendations for vegetarians who are out there? What kind of protein sources would you recommend?
Dietician Abraham: Absolutely. As you also know, protein is the building blocks of protein are amino acids, and in vegetarian sources, the only one that is complete is soy based. But of course, some of you might not also like soy. That’s why we need to be mindful of mixing different legumes. So legumes are one good source of protein. Also, if your protein target is higher, I recommend using vegan protein powder sources.
You can easily implement them within your kind of oatmeal in the morning, or you can have them within your smoothie. This is the kind of source that I recommend, or if you are like soy product lover, then there are more options for you, like tempeh, or tofu, that you can go for. Some of the fewer products we can see now in the market, which is quite good, are, for example, veggie burgers, right? So not all are great, so we need to be mindful of them. However, some of them are lentil rich and more naturally made is something to consider, like we can use them as a protein enhancement method.
NourishDoc: Okay, that’s great. We have an attendee if I still need to get your name, but you’re welcome to ask any question. The person who has just joined. Any comments? Do you want to ask a question? Hello, Mahindra. You joined and want to ask a question before I wrap up.
Mahindra: Yes, ma’am. I am asking about energy levels or metabolism.
NourishDoc: Okay, what do you want to ask? That’s what you were talking about that as all of us age, the energy level and metabolism go down, and that is just, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a woman or a man, it happens to all of us, and that’s what you know, Abraham was talking about how you can research your metabolism, how can you increase your energy, just simple nutrition. So, what is your specific question?
How Can We Create a Good Routine For Increasing Energy Levels?
Mahindra: My specific question is about my age and my metabolism system. My age is just 35, and my activities are very low. So, I can’t feel more energetic, or my metabolism is slow. So, I can’t digest anything, or I’m lazy. I’m challenging myself for this because I am also a wellness coach and trying to experiment with myself. How can I challenge my metabolism, change my activities, and eat good nutrition?
NourishDoc: Okay, so please, but please note, this is not medical advice, right? This is just an educational session that we bring. So, on a high level, Abraham, I’ll leave it here if you feel comfortable commenting on this.
Dietician Abraham: Sometimes it’s hard to see if it’s metabolism, and it’s very easy that we fall to Q’s metabolism as a factor for the problem. So, there are many because you mentioned energy and, like, the way you lose weight. Consider checking and bringing awareness about your intake because I would like to contribute to low metabolism if the metabolism is in the question that answers your question.
Mahindra: Sorry, can you repeat?
Dietician Abraham: Yes, we can easily accuse metabolism as being the factor for causing kind of low weight loss or causing the like; we don’t see the result, right? In your case, it’s better to check if there are other things specifically related to your daily intake that can be causing those low energy because what you mentioned mostly is also feeling lazy and low energetic in terms of doing things.
It’s unrelated to the sorry and not necessarily led into metabolism itself because metabolism is like when you’re doing everything correctly. You’re doing everything, like the exercise and sleep sides, but then you’re seeing no results. The metabolism can be a questionable factor. So, it’s very, again, it needs to be looked deeper into it, but I will suggest you bring awareness to your take to see if there is something that you’re either having imbalanced foods for your meals or you’re having some, like more processed foods or like to track your food intake and see maybe to start from there rather than like to conclude about metabolism itself.
Mahindra: Okay, sir, can I ask you one question again?
NourishDoc: Now, like this, okay, this is the last question. I don’t want it to be like a consultation here, but this is the last question, and please, Mahinder, if you have issues concerning your thing, feel free to consult with him, you know, we, like later on, but, yes, go ahead, last question. You can ask her one question.
Mahindra: I am asking about protein metabolism and fat metabolism. What is that? It’s different compositions of metabolism, different types of metabolism.
Dietician Abraham: Okay, so there is, of course, in your body, like, each food component is digested and metabolized differently, but that has only a biological meaning, not necessarily your body doesn’t respond to each factor differently. If you have thyroid because it usually comes from thyroid issues or all the hormonal issues I mentioned, right?
So if those are the reasons, all of them are affected at once; it’s not just like your protein, your metabolizing your protein sources nicely, but on the other hand, unless you have some genetic issues. If you have intolerances, then that needs further investigation. However, if you’re a healthy person without any health issues, your metabolism will affect every macronutrient similarly. So it doesn’t matter if it’s carb, protein, or fat. They are all equally going to go down or up.
Mahindra: Thank you, sir, thank you, thank you so much.
NourishDoc: All right, well, thank you, thank you so much for supporting us, Mahindra, and thank you so much for coming in and joining us. We are encouraging all the participants to come. However, we want to ensure that this is not medical advice to protect our experts. So, if you need one-on-one, Abraham is there; you can reach out to him. Thanks so much, Abraham, for joining me today; I appreciate it.
Dietician Abraham: Thank you for having me, and again, if you guys have any further questions regarding any of this, feel free to reach out to me. You can either find me on Instagram at Abraham dietitian, or you can also find me on Facebook with the same name.
NourishDoc: Okay, everyone, thank you for your continued support. Mahindra, thank you, and we will see you tomorrow.
