Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 25 - Conclusion

We’ve come a long way! We now actually know more about the metabolism, and how to increase metabolic speed than most people; and we’re therefore in a position to put that information to good use.

We’ve learned that the metabolism is a process and not an actual body part.

It harmonizes two essential bodily functions: converting food into cells/tissues, and breaking cells down to provide energy. We learned that the former process is known as anabolism, and the latter is catabolism. Indeed, it’s this latter process that influences our ability to lose weight, and to keep it from coming back!

Yet going beyond the biological basics, we also learned of 3 integrated aspects of speeding up metabolism and losing weight.

These aspects were categorized in terms of: exercise, lifestyle, and diet. And within each of these 3 categories we’ve learned important, practical, and quite easy ways to boost metabolism.

Now, it’s the time for action; for as they say, wisdom is the result of experience, not study! Obviously, it was essential for us to understand this subject and how it relates to boosting metabolism in that light, there is no question study is invaluable. But now you’re also equipped with the actual practical knowledge that you need to actually have the body you always wanted.

The next step – boosting your metabolism – is all up to you. Good luck, have fun, and enjoy your better, leaner healthier life!

If you’ve been following all of this series, I do hope you’ve enjoyed it and found some new useful information.

I’ll be back with an all new and exciting series very soon but till then, take care and you’ll always be welcome to leave a comment or email me on sandra@easywaystoloseweightforwomen.com.

Best wishes for your success.

Sandra

Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 24 - Common Metabolism-Boosting Myths

Myth No. 4: Too Much Focus

Don’t be fooled into thinking that because this is a short blog, it plays an insignificant part of your weight loss plan – it’s a trap may fall into and makes the difference between success and failure, quite literally.

Speeding up your metabolism and achieving your weight loss goals involves a certain degree of focus; after all, there’s a lot of things competing for your attention (including that delicious Chef’s Special pecan pie!), and you certainly need to be able to keep your eye on the goal in order to maintain your program.

Yet sometimes too much focus can be a bad thing; and some dieters understand this all too well. Remember: speeding up your metabolism is a holistic effort that includes exercise, lifestyle, and diet changes.

Focusing on only one of these at the expense of the others (either one or both) can be detrimental. In fact, in some cases, it can be counter-productive. So the myth here is that you shouldn’t go all out and focus on becoming an exercise guru, and then move onto lifestyle, and then to diet.

You have to integrate all 3 aspects into your life at the same time. True, based on your unique situation, you will likely emphasize one more than the others. That’s fine and normal. But it’s a myth – and a mistake – to ignore any one of these.

It takes all three aspects to speed up your metabolism and propel you towards your weight loss goals for the long-term.

Coming up next time, we conclude our Boosting Your Metabolism series, and help you take that all important first step – your first step into your new life and your new body!

See you then

Best Wishes

Sandra

Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 23 - Common Metabolism-Boosting Myths

Myth No. 3: Low Intensity Workouts

It’s fair to say that any exercise is better than no exercise. So if you lead a sedentary lifestyle, then even walking around your block for 10 minutes a day is going to do something positive for your body and its metabolism.

True, that difference may be imperceptible to the naked eye (or it may not?), but the bottom line is that exercise is good. This being said, some people believe that they should perform low-intensity workouts even when they could be performing more high-intensity workouts. For example, instead of jogging for 20 minutes with their heart at the top end of their aerobic zone, they opt for low-intensity jogs that barely break a sweat.

Low intensity workouts simply don’t lead to a faster metabolism; they can’t. Remember, as we discussed very early in this blog, metabolism is a process. And that process is really one of two types: taking energy and making cells (anabolism), or breaking cells down to make energy (catabolism).

If you don’t achieve a high-intensity workout, then your body can’t achieve catabolism; it won’t need to. So the only way your body is going to go and break down existing cells is if it needs to.

So keep this in mind as you exercise, either at home or at a gym. Low intensity workouts are better than nothing at all; and they may be necessary if you’re recovering from injury, or just starting out on the exercise journey.

But once you reach a level of basic fitness, only high intensity (aerobic) workouts will make a difference in terms of your metabolism. High intensity workouts force your body to find energy to help you maintain that level of exercise; and it does so through catabolism.

Next time we’ll cover Myth No. 4, and why too much focus can put up a barrier between yourself and the body you always wanted.


See you then

Best wishes

Sandra

Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 22 - Common Metabolism-Boosting Myths

Myth No. 2 – Dropping Calorie Intake

As we discussed earlier in this blog series (but it’s so important that it deserves an encore near the end), trying to lose weight by drastically cutting down on your calories doesn’t work; in fact, it’s unhealthy.

The thing to remember is that the body’s ability to lose weight is not controlled by calories. Calories are the input. The real control mechanism is that famous concept that you’ve become very familiar with now: metabolism.

Calories are merely units of energy. It’s how your body deals with that energy that determines whether weight is gained or lost.

So with that being said, cutting down your caloric intake to, say, 1000 calories a day isn’t necessarily going to help you lose weight; because it doesn’t necessarily change your metabolism.

Indeed, as you know, if you slow down your caloric intake, your body – which is always trying to help you in the best way that it knows how – will slow down its metabolism.

Really, it makes sense: the body says that something has gone wrong; instead of the 2000 calories that it needs, it’s only getting 1000. The body doesn’t know why this is happening; it doesn’t know that you want to lose weight.

It just senses that something is wrong; perhaps you’re trapped in a cave or something, or stuck in a snowstorm. So the body, trying to help you, will slow down its metabolism; it will do its best to slow down the conversion rate, so that you have as much energy on hand as possible.

Now, if your body was able to read this book and you could say: look, please just do what you normally do, but do it with 1000 fewer calories a day for a while, then we might actually get somewhere.

But the body doesn’t work that way. It won’t help you lose weight if you dramatically cut down on calories.

It will not only slow down metabolism, but also (and here’s the worst part), if and when you ever increase calories again, your body will have to deal with that via a slower metabolic engine. So you can actually gain weight if, after cutting down your calories for a period of time, you consume extra calories (say while on a vacation for instance).

See you next time with Myth No. 3.

Take care and best wishes

Sandra

Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 21 - Common Metabolism-Boosting Myths

Hi again, as we move towards the end of our ’Boosting Your Metabolism’ series, we thought it might be useful to talk about the 4 most prevalent myths concerning metabolism and metabolism-boosting.

Since this blog has been about reality and not myths, we didn’t cover any of them in the actual blog. Yet, considering how common these myths are, it is still useful for you to know them; and to know that they’re myths.

That way, if you come across them in a magazine, at a fitness club, or just from the well-intentioned but misguided advice of a friend, you can confidently say (or at least just think), sorry, but that’s a myth and I’m not going to fall for that one!

Myth No. 1: Diet Pills

The general consensus on diet pills are contained in two powerful words: BUYER BEWARE.

The problem here is that many makers of diet pills offer claims that simply aren’t realistic; and if you read the fine-print of most of these advertisements, you’ll see that they’re really too good to be true. Little notes like the claims made in this advertisement are not typical should be enough of a wake-up call to realize that there’s more to the story.

In some cases, diet pills can help boost metabolism temporarily. This, however, can be risky and generally shouldn’t be done without a doctor’s say-so. Unfortunately, people can become somewhat addicted to diet pills, which can lead to disaster.

Remember that some diet pills are water loss pills. That is, they are diuretics that promote water loss, usually through excess urination. The jury on water-loss diet pills is somewhat less open-minded than diet pills in general – three words this time …… THEY DON’T WORK!

Seriously: water loss diet pills are taken on the principle that you’ll lose weight through water. And, yes, that’s true: if you urinate 15 times a day, you’re physically going to weigh less.

But this is not actual weight loss! This is merely unhealthy temporary weight loss, and it will come roaring back the minute that water stores are replenished through diet.

Or, worse still, if a person taking these water pills fails to restore their body’s fluid needs, they can actually suffer dehydration; which can, and has, led to coma and death.

Now granted, that’s a pretty bleak picture, so it is wise to keep an open mind and a balanced view. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of pills available on the market that can aid weight loss in healthier ways that water loss, it’s just that ‘BUYER BEWARE’ has been written in capital letters for good reason!

In the next blog we’ll look at Myth No. 2 – Drop Calorie Intake.

So until then,

Take care


Sandra

Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 20 - Build Muscle

Many people, particularly some women, are very cautious about undertaking any exercise regimen that can lead to muscle building.

The old perception was that muscle building leads to muscle bulking, and before long, gorging forearm veins and other unwanted results. This is, frankly, not the case.

Provided that women aren’t supporting their workouts with specific muscle-building supplements, there is no need to be concerned; because building lean muscle won’t make them bulk up.

Still, however, the question remains: why would women (and, of course, men) who want to boost their metabolism focus on muscle building? Isn’t cardiovascular exercising the only thing that matters?

Again, the answer is: No! In addition to a healthy and responsible cardiovascular program, muscle building is an exceptionally powerful way to boost metabolism.

How? Because, a pound of muscle burns more calories than a pound of fat.

And what does this mean? It means (and get ready to stare in awe) that if you have more muscle on your body – anywhere on your body – you will simply burn more calories as a result.

You don’t even have to do anything. You’ll simply burn more calories, because muscle requires more of an energy investment.

Of course, it’s common-sense that if you build muscle and then leave it alone, over time, the muscle fibres will weaken and you’ll lose that wonderful calorie-burning factory. But that’s no problem, because all you need to do is build and maintain healthy muscle.

It may sound daunting; especially if at the moment you believe you have much more fat than muscle. Yet the important thing for you to remember is that once you start building muscle – through any kind of strength training – your body will itself start burning more calories.

It has to, even while you sleep, or go to a movie, or read a book. It’s like putting your calorie-burning (catabolism) program on auto-pilot. So don’t let a little (or even a lot) of extra flab, at the moment, deter you from believing that muscle building is important.

Yes, you should enjoy cardiovascular exercise too, because that’s ultimately how your body is going to burn existing fat. But muscle building plays a profoundly supportive role in that pursuit.

And it’s an exponential one, too: the more fat you transform into muscle, the more calories you’ll burn simply to maintain that new muscle (and the wonderful cycle goes on and on!).

So you see, building muscle isn’t so scary and it can boost your metabolism too.

Next time, we’ll take a look at what the Common Metabolism-Boosting Myths are, starting with Myth No.1.


Bye for now


Sandra

Boost Your Calories to Boost Your Metabolism

For many of us, information concerning metabolism has related in one way or another to eating, in that we are told of metabolism-friendly foods, or metabolism unfriendly foods.

But really, while we may be basically aware that, all else being equal, a stalk of celery is better for your metabolism than fries with gravy, our understanding of diet and metabolism is actually pretty low.

To help overcome this, here are some powerful and scientific diet-related tips that will boost your metabolism. Indeed, as you will soon learn, it’s not just the case of what you eat that matters; it is when, and how, too.

So calories – yes, the word calorie has a bad rap. We frequently come across low calorie or calorie reduced foods. And it is not uncommon to overhear someone gasp about the immense calorie content of certain foods, such as a rich and creamy desert, or a giant fast food burger.

All of this anti-calorie rhetoric has therefore made a lot of us pretty calorie-phobic; as soon as we see something that has lots of them, we run away. But is this wise?

Well, yes and no. Yes, it is wise in the sense that avoiding that double-layer chocolate fudge cake for dessert may be a good idea. The calories that come from the cake are really going to be the so-called empty calorie kind; which means there is no real nutritional value that your body can squeeze out and make use of.

But in the bigger picture, it is definitely unwise for your metabolism to become calorie-avoidant.

Why? Because your body is a marvelous machine that tries, at all times, to do what it can to make your life easier. Indeed, even when is does not function at optimal levels (for a variety of reasons, including genetics), it still tries to do its very best. The body, for all of its limitations, is not lazy!

The body is always trying to keep us alive and functioning in the manner that it deems to be healthiest, so that is why if you suddenly decrease the amount of calories you need, your body will not try to do more with less. In other words, your body will not respond in the way that you want it to, it will not necessarily provoke catabolism and thus reduce weight and fat cells.

To the contrary, your smart and wise body will try to keep you alive by slowing down its metabolism. Whether you are genuinely trapped somewhere without food, or are deliberately slashing your calories, to your body the circumstances are irrelevant – it will simply believe something is wrong and become very stingy with energy.

The end result? If your body needs 2000 calories a day to survive, and you suddenly slash it to only 1000, it will not begin to burn off 1000 calories worth of cells that you have lying around on your love handles. Instead, your body will slow down its metabolism. It will really try to squeeze as much energy out of those 1000 calories, because it does not want to waste anything.

Physically, you will naturally feel more tired because your body is being very miserly with energy, and will devote its 1000-calorie ration to essential systems, like blood and oxygen supply (and others). Slash your calories and the bottom line is, metabolically, you will not be burning off extra calories. In fact, you can actually gain weight by dramatically reducing your calorie intake!

The flipside to this is of course, that you should consume a daily caloric intake that is proportionate to your body size, type, and weight loss goals. Once you have got an idea on the amount of calories that you need you can provide them to your body via healthy, efficient calories.

For instance, if your body needs 1500 calories per day, and one slice of double-fudge chocolate cake delivers a whopping 500 of those, then obviously, eating just one of these slices will take up a full 1/3rd of your daily caloric needs and worse still, they are empty calories, which means you are going to be very tired and lethargic.

On the other hand, drinking a tasty fruit smoothie made with yogurt and nuts can deliver half as many calories, and provide you with essential nutrients, vitamins, and other elements that your body needs.

So, the healthy way to lose weight is not by slashing your calorie intake; and if you are looking for easy ways to lose weight, banishing all the bad calories you enjoy in your diet is certainly not the answer either. But if you understand where good and bad calories come from, and ration the bad rather than the number of calories in themselves, you will find that boosting your calories really can boost your metabolism, and it is a whole lot easier than you might think!

Until next time, CLICK HERE and find out how you can boost your metabolism without going hungry!


Sandra

Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 12 - Get on the Wagon

Maybe you have noticed that people who carefully choose low-fat, low-calorie meal choices, are often very disciplined when it comes to not ordering the Chef’s Special pecan pie for desert, yet order a glass or two of wine with their meal?

Well, unfortunately, these people are really undermining their efforts to boost metabolism, and are simply unaware that many alcoholic drinks are laden with almost as many calories as sugary-rich soft drinks.

A bottle of beer can deliver a few hundred calories, and most cocktails are in the same range. Wine is generally considered to deliver the least amount of calories; but even this is a bit of a slippery slope.

Three glasses of wine can be worth 300 calories that the body simply has to deal with in one form or another, but that’s not all, because studies show that drinking alcohol with meals actually encourages over eating; which means yet more calories that need to be burned away (or transformed into fat!).

The tip here isn’t to stop drinking alcohol altogether (despite the title of this section). If you enjoy alcohol then there’s no particular reason why you have to quit cold turkey, but you will save a bit of money and not consume as many calories.

If you are compensating for these added calories through exercise or muscle building, that’s okay and catabolism cannot occur. But if you go heavy on the alcohol instead, without compensating, then anabolism will inevitably occur, and new cells will be created from those calories (mostly fat cells).

So the call here is simply that you become aware that alcohol influences your metabolism significantly. If you consume excess alcohol, (even without becoming inebriated), you force your system to deal with more calories and worse still, they will be ‘empty’ calories with little nutritional value.

Just something to bear in mind till next time, when we continue through the Lifestyle section of Boosting Your Metabolism.

See you again soon


Sandra

Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 10 - Variety

They say that variety is the spice of life, and most of us wouldn’t disagree with that, yet despite this awareness, many people don’t spice up their exercise program; which is surprising, since doing so often leads to valuable metabolism-boosting benefits.

There are a few easy ways to add variety to your exercise program. We’ve already talked about interval training as one effective method of shifting your body’s metabolic engine into higher gear, but there are other ways too – the first being to break up a longer routine into smaller parts.

So for instance, instead of committing to 1x1 hour workout a day, it can boost your metabolism considerably to split this up into 2x30 minute workouts; or even, on some occasions, 3x20 minute workouts.

Then there are the old tried and tested methods of adding variety into your daily exercise routine without formally exercising – taking the stairs instead of the elevator; starting your day with a brisk walk instead of a coffee and the newspaper, or even parking further away from the grocery store entrance and walking the extra distance.

If you stop to think about it for a moment, there are probably plenty of little tweaks you can make to you daily activities that can add variety and a bit of informal exercise. And the good news is that whether you decide to split up a formal exercise routine, or tweak an existing daily activity, you will gain two important metabolism-boosting benefits. Firstly, they can make exercising more fun, and in terms of weight loss, fun is often a by-word for success.

Having a boring exercise routine increases your chances of stopping considerably, and so adding new or fun elements to your overall exercise commitment simply helps encourage you to stick with your program. And since exercising is a core part of boosting your metabolism, anything that helps you continue exercising over the long term is a great strategy.

The second and equally important benefit of adding variety in your exercise program leads us back to the interval training concept, we discussed in Blog 9.

When you add variety to your workout, your body cannot get into a groove. Remember: the body is a remarkable piece of work, and will always strive to do things efficiently.

Naturally, the overall state of your health (which can be influenced by genetics and other factors outside of your control) will play a role in how efficiently your body runs.

But regardless of how your body is put together, it really likes you, and wants to do things as efficiently as it possibly can.

Therefore, when you start exercising, your body starts to develop a kind of expectation of energy output. It’s not doing this to be lazy; it’s doing this because, quite sincerely, it wants to help!

It starts to predict that you need a certain amount of energy to complete a certain task (such as jog for 20 minutes), and attempts to provide that energy output more efficiently.

So, when you first start jogging for, say, 2 minutes a time followed by 5 minutes of walking, your body may require a great deal of energy to help you achieve this.

And as a result, you may find yourself very out of breath or tired as your body strives to meet this increased demand. Naturally, of course, catabolism will be involved, and your body metabolism will increase.

But over time, say a month or so, your body will simply become more efficient. It will have become stronger, and will be able to supply your energy needs much more efficiently; you may not even break a sweat!

What’s happened here is that your health has improved; your body has to work less hard to provide you with your energy needs.

Ironically, this can actually dilute your metabolism-boosting efforts; because, as you know, you want to tell your body to start the catabolism process. But if your body is efficiently working, it won’t really dig into its reserves (e.g. fat cells) in order to provide you with the energy that you need.

So the trick is to keep variety in your workouts. Many people choose to cross-train for this very reason. It not only targets different muscle groups, but it keeps your body from finding a groove whereby it can try to ‘help’ you by slowing down metabolism.

Remember, your body doesn’t read blogs like this; it doesn’t need to, and it doesn’t care. It has no clue that a speedier metabolism is “good” or “bad”. As far as you and I are concerned, we know that a speedy metabolism is a good thing in our weight loss efforts. But our bodies don’t make this evaluation, and won’t turn on our metabolism jets because we want them to.

Of course it would be great to be able to send a memo to your body and ask it to please speed up metabolism, but sadly that’s not reality. So what we have to do is force the body to say to itself:

“Hey, I need to speed up metabolism because this person needs more energy!”

And one of the best ways for you to force your body to have this kind of thinking is to add variety to your workouts.

So, although we’ve come to the end of the ‘Exercise’ section now, there’s plenty more for you coming up in the Boosting Your Metabolism series. Next time in Blog 11, we’ll start to explore ‘Lifestyle’ and how little changes can have the most profound influence on the speed of your metabolism.

All the best till then,


Sandra


P.S. If you’re looking for plenty of fresh ideas on how to spice up your exercise routine, there’s bound to be something for you on the link. Just Click Here!

P.P.S. And if the man in your life ever fancied a 6-Pack, he’s going to love this just as much as you will!

Boosting Your Metabolism - Part 2 - What is Metabolism?

Hi again,

Before you can begin to boost your metabolism, it makes sense to explain exactly what metabolism is, and how it works – but don’t worry, you only need to know the basics!

Some people think that the metabolism is a kind of organ, or a body part, that influences digestion. Actually, the metabolism isn’t any particular body part. It’s the process by which the body converts food into energy.

Hence, you’ve likely heard of the phrase metabolic process used synonymously with the term metabolism, because they both mean the same thing.


The Medical Mumbo Jumbo

Again, don’t worry - this isn’t a complicated medical text (which should be great news to most of you!), and so we don’t need to spend an unnecessary amount of time and space focusing on the layered complexity of the human body and its extraordinary intelligence.

Without drilling deeply into medical details (which are not relevant for our general understanding purposes) it is however helpful to briefly look at the biological mechanisms behind metabolism.

Metabolism, is the process of transforming food (e.g. nutrients) into fuel (e.g. energy). The body uses this energy to conduct a vast array of essential functions.

In fact, your ability to read this page, literally, is driven by your metabolism.

If you had no metabolism – that is, if you had no metabolic process that was converting food into energy – then you wouldn’t be able to move.

In fact, long before you realized that you couldn’t move a finger or lift your foot, your internal processes would have stopped; because the basic building blocks of life – circulating blood, transforming oxygen into carbon dioxide, expelling potentially lethal wastes through the kidneys and so on – all of these depend on metabolism.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear someone say that they have a slow metabolism. While they may struggle with unwanted weight gain due to metabolic factors, they certainly have a functioning metabolism. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t even be able to speak (because that, too, requires energy that comes from, you guessed it: metabolism!).

It’s also interesting to note that, while we conveniently refer to the metabolic process as if it were a single function, it’s really a catch-all term for countless functions that are taking place inside the body. Every second of every minute of every day of your life – even, of course, when you sleep – numerous chemical conversions are taking place through metabolism, or metabolic functioning. Anabolism (building cells) and catabolism (breaking down cells), are two of those functions we’ll be looking at a little more in Boosting Your Metabolism – Part 3.

So to sum up, metabolism can reasonably be referred to as a harmonizing process that manages to achieve two critical bodily functions that, in a sense, seem to be at odds with each other.

And that’s it – that’s about as much as you need to know about what metabolism is to start boosting yours, and when you do, you will find out that it is not just a healthy way to lose weight, but one of the most incredibly easy ways to lose weight too!

If you would like to find out more about a really great metabolism boosting proramme, just Click Here.

Till next time

Best Wishes

Sandra

Boosting Your Metabolism - The Facts You Really Need To Know - Part 1

Hi there, and welcome to Part 1 of my blog series on ‘Boosting Your Metabolism – The Facts You Really Need To Know’.

It seems rarely a week passes without hearing the word metabolism these days – from the ‘girl on the street’ as an explanation of why she’s having trouble shifting her love handles, to doctors by way of explaining why starvation and water loss diets are not medically or scientifically effective, because they do not influence or take into account metabolism (there’s that word again!)

So, for all of the usage that this rather daunting and biologically-charged word enjoys in our world, you would comfortably assume that people understand it, or at least have some fundamental information when it comes to speeding up their metabolism, right?

Wrong!

Each year, tens of millions of people attempt to retake control over their health and the shape of their body; and each year, tens of millions of people feel that they’ve “failed” because, try as they might, they just cannot speed up their metabolism.

So this blog series is the antidote to that way of thinking and feeling, because the perceived failure is not a failure in any of these hard working dieters and exercisers (of which you may be one).

The failure is with the medical and nutritional sector as a whole, which has simply not provided people with the information that they need to know in order to speed up their metabolism.

And given the size of the nutritional field and the fact that so much of it is influenced by money-making enterprises, (not all of the field, but enough to make a difference) perhaps that is not so surprising.


What’s Inside…

And that is why this blog series exists. It’s been created for the millions of everyday people like us, who simply want to know the healthy way to lose weight by speeding up their metabolism.

We want to know:

• What the heck a metabolism is, and what role it really plays on weight loss and gain

• The proven, scientific ways to speed up metabolism – not myths and fitness club “speculation”, but the real deal.

• Specific diet and food items that promote a faster metabolism, so that once unwanted weight has been lost, it can be kept off through a responsible eating plan.

And in the blog posts ahead, that’s precisely what I will cover, so look out for Boosting Your Metabolism – The Facts You Really Need To Know – Part 2, because if you are looking for easy ways to lose weight, speeding up your metabolism is as easy as it gets …. and it’s permanent!

See you then

Sandra

Top 10 Secrets of the Slim

Want to know the secrets of the slim?  Well check out this video on how people use them everyday of their lives, and how you can too, enjoy!




To find out more information on losing weight whilst still enjoying all the foods you love, Click here

Sandra

Easy Ways To Lose Weight

Check out this great video on why starving yourself to lose weight will never work!



Discover more easy ways to lose weight by clicking here now!

Sandra