5 Healthy Ways to Boost Metabolism

Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the energy your body expends at rest. It is usually determined by your genetics, but new studies show how you can trick your body into burning calories more proficiently. Check this out!

1. Build Muscle As we get older and our metabolism slows down, we simultaneously start to experience both muscle loss and fat gain. One way to help fight this metabolic stagnation is with resistance/strength training. This type of training improves the health and resilience of muscle, providing much greater improvements in strength and tone. But more importantly, muscle itself is very metabolically active, allowing you to burn more calories, even at rest, which can lead to a drastic reduction in body fat. As an added bonus, studies suggest that resistance training can even boost life expectancy.

2. Cardiovascular Exercise Cardiovascular exercise, or just "cardio", is by far one of the most effective and safest ways to boost your metabolism. This type of exercise includes long-distance running, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), kickboxing, and so on. Cardio not only raises your metabolic rate, but keeps your resting energy expenditure high during periods of recovery. Try no less than thirty minutes of moderate to vigorous cardio training per day, in addition to two strength training sessions per week to keep your metabolism high.

3. Recharge with Green Tea Green tea contains antioxidants called catechins that have been shown in studies to help slim the waistline and decrease overall body weight. Also, green tea is packed with cancer-fighting compounds, which are an insurmountable benefit to your diet, at any age.

4. Don't Starve Starving yourself is the worst possible thing you can do to your metabolism. Consuming a low-calorie diet robs your body of sufficient nutrients to satisfy its fundamental functions and plunges your metabolism through the floor.

Make sure to consume no less than 1,200 calories daily for women and 1,500 for men to meet basal metabolic needs. Keep in mind that this is the minimum amount of calories needed just to fuel resting functions, such as heartbeat, breathing, thinking and other involuntary actions. The more active you are, the more calories you will need to consume. Never trust diets that require drastic drops in caloric intake.

5. Thermogenic Fat Burners Thermogenics are more generally referred to as fat burners. These health supplements increase fat metabolism by generating heat through a rise in core body temperature, medically termed as thermogenesis. Effective thermogenic supplements contain numerous key ingredients that work in synergy with one another to help trigger fat burning 'thermogenic' actions, including lipolysis, which is the release of stored body fat.