subject: Your Metabolism - How To Speed It Up To Lose Weight [print this page] We've all heard it or even said it before: "I'm not able to lose weight because of my metabolism." It's convenient to blame our unwanted weight on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let's learn about the real importance of metabolism - and better yet, how you can get the most "burn" for your buck by recharging your metabolism.
In the most basic sense, metabolism encompasses all of the chemical and physical changes that take place inside the body's cells. Most often, though, metabolism refers to the manner in which the body obtains and uses energy from what we eat, so it really does have an important function in weight loss and gain.
Not everyone is given the same metabolism, and our rates actually fluctuate over the course of our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism isn't necessarily making excuses. Age affects metabolism, which will slow about 5% every 10 years after age 40, and by gender, as males typically burn more calories at rest than females, and by the amount of muscle mass you possess (more muscle generally means a higher rate of metabolism). Genetics also influences metabolism, not to mention having children, as well as whether a woman chooses to breast-feed.
In spit of all of the wild cards, the fact is that if your calorie intake surpasses your metabolism, excess energy will get stored in the body as fat. Though some of the aspects affecting metabolic rate can't be helped, fortunately, there are ways to rev up the metabolism you are born with.
The first rule is to take in the correct foods in the right quantities. When you skip a meal, your body switches to starvation mode, which slows metabolism to keep calories, because it does not know when it will get food again. And when the metabolism slows, so does the rate at which you lose weight.
When you finally do get food after having skipped a meal, instead of using the calories in the food you've just eaten, your body transfers them to body fat to hold for the next "fast." To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 - 6 smaller meals during the day and try to eat close to the same times each day. Most importantly, never skip a meal.
You can also step up your metabolic rate with exercise, including both aerobic routines and strength training. Aerobic activities, such as biking, dancing and running, burn more calories in the short term, while strength training will create more muscle, which improves metabolism and burns more calories in the long term - even when you are sitting still, muscle uses more calories to function than fat.
In fact, every pound of muscle requires 35 calories per day, while each pound of fat requires just 2 calories per day. Despite this, you might be surprised that the more weight you have, the faster your metabolism is likely to run. Simply put, the extra weight makes your body work more to maintain its processes.
This is partially why it is almost always easiest to drop weight when you start dieting, and is more difficult as you continue because, if you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at an elevated rate, so that even a slight decrease in calories will yield an immediate weight loss.
But what happens after that immediate loss, when a plateau occurs and motivation seems to go by the "weigh" side? Persistent compulsions and cravings can suddenly come back, and when they do, don't overlook a valuable resource - lose weight self-hypnosis. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious mind so that, in essence, you can eliminate food cravings. When we examine why we snack, recognizing why weight loss hypnosis works so successfully becomes evident.
For many of us, snacking has become a habit - maybe you do it unconsciously when you are watching TV or driving or when you are under stress. Hypnosis can actually reprogram your thoughts to stop those associations, leaving you to watch TV or drive without experiencing the need to eat.
One of the most successful weight loss hypnosis methods for breaking the snacking cycle is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, which relies on negotiating with the unconscious mind and making it use the same thought processes that are creating your appetite, to eliminate your appetite. NLP takes many years of study and practical experience for a hypnotherapist to learn and master, but positive results can come very quickly and seem almost magical to someone who has always experienced cravings.
NLP can be just as important as exercise and motivation because, as you learned above, it can help make sure that you eat the right kinds of foods at the right times, and this is a vital part of turbo-charging your metabolism. If you wish to keep your metabolism at full speed and make sure that all of your exercise and hard work aren't going to waste by yielding to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings altogether.
by: Alan Densky
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