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 17 - Eat Yourself Slimmer

Eat More Often?

You may have heard before that eating frequently throughout the day can be very good for boosting metabolism, but if you ever wondered why, here are a couple of reasons.

The first is that people who tend to eat throughout the day do considerably less snacking. As a result, they are able to avoid the potato chips or candy bars that they might otherwise consume if they suddenly became hungry. People who eat throughout the day do not tend to experience severe hunger pangs, because they never reach that stage.

The second reason is that by eating throughout the day, you are constantly keeping your metabolism working. It is a little like having a generator running all the time; it will simply use more electricity than if you just powered it up 3 times a day.

Now, it goes without saying (though it should be said anyway just in case!), that just because it is good for metabolism-boosting to eat frequently, does not mean that you can eat junk all day long!

If you choose to eat more frequently, then try to be more aware of what you eat; because you can easily exceed the amount of daily calories you need if you do not keep an eye on this.

So, if your plan is to follow the eat-more-to-burn-more approach, it is often a good idea to keep a food journal that notes what you eat throughout the day (and drink of course).

Merely focusing on the number of your daily calories is only half the trick though. Try to ensure that you are also eating enough protein, carbohydrates, fats (the good unsaturated kind!), and the other vitamins and minerals that your body needs for a healthy way to lose weight.

See you next time in 'Boosting Your Metabolism - Eat Early!'.
 
 
Sandra