raising your metabolism?

mcgeorge5
mcgeorge5 Posts: 92 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
What, if anything, will help to change your metabolism? If it's true that you can lower your metabolism by not eating adequately, then why do people who eat lots get fat?

There's more to it than just food, right? So if I said I want to work towards raising my metabolism, how would I go about to do that?

Replies

  • JenMc14
    JenMc14 Posts: 2,389 Member
    Yes, you can lower your metabolism by consistently undereating. The way I understand it, and I'm not an expert, is that if you don't adequately fuel your body, it slows things down to preserve energy/fuel. And, yes, people still get "fat" by eating too much because if you eat more than you burn, it gets stored. So, if you burn 2500 calories a day, but you eat 3000 calories a day, you're body is storing 500 calories a day, likely as fat, to put it simplistically.

    I don't know a lot about boosting metabolism, but if you eat well and work out consistently, that helps. Muscle also helps burn a bit faster, so if you increase your LBM there's that, although it's not really all that much.
  • D_Journey
    D_Journey Posts: 41 Member
    Join the group 'in place of a road map' and check out their topics related to metabolism resets.
  • miraclemeli
    miraclemeli Posts: 1 Member
    There are really only two ways to raise your metabolism: exercise and eating small frequent meals.
  • steve1686
    steve1686 Posts: 346 Member
    do yourself a favor and watch:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHzie6XRGk
  • ajstaudt
    ajstaudt Posts: 28 Member
    It is my understanding that eating several small meals, as opposed to a few large ones, over the course of your day promotes a more active metabolism. I believe the idea is that this method of feeding forces your metabolism to stay more consistently active, while avoided the various spikes and crashes associated with very large feedings and/or binge eating, leaving you with a more consistent energy supply and potentially less fat storage. This, coupled with staying active and getting the proper amount of sleep, can really rev up your metabolism, especially when employing short, high-intensity workouts (HIIT and heavy lifting), keeping your body in a more cosistant fat-burning mode. It certainly has worked for me (dropped from 23% to15% BF in less than three months since employing this method). Good luck and stay motivated!
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
    Layne Norton talks a lot about this in his video blogs... I highly recommend them.

    The gist is that you slowly increase cals over time allowign your body to adjust. There's some strategy to it, so don't just think you can add 100 cals every week for a month and have a whole new metabolism.
  • Shock_Wave
    Shock_Wave Posts: 1,573 Member
    I highly recommend toilet yoga to raise your metabolism!:laugh:
    toilet-yoga-640x348.jpg
  • mustgetmuscles1
    mustgetmuscles1 Posts: 3,346 Member
    Metabolism can definitely be effected by dieting.

    http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/calorie-partitioning-part-2.html

    http://youtu.be/hw3kfRkqVWU

    Biology's response to dieting:
    http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/301/3/R581.full.pdf+html

    Metabolic responses to prolonged weight reduction:
    http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/290/6/R1577.full.pdf+html

    Adipose gene expression in response to caloric restriction & weight regain:
    http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/...

    Calorie restruction increases mitochondrial efficiency:
    http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/290/6/R1577.full.pdf+html

    The defense of body weight:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23126426


    As for raising metabolism it would depend on where your at with your dieting history. Eat at a reasonable deficit while dieting and there is probably not a lot you need to do. If you have been in severe deficits for a long period of time you may want to slowly start increasing calories to try and restore it to a normal level. You could jump straight to a normal calorie intake restore it faster but you need to be prepared for weight gain. Meal frequency or timing is not going to do anything for you.
  • mustgetmuscles1
    mustgetmuscles1 Posts: 3,346 Member
    What, if anything, will help to change your metabolism? If it's true that you can lower your metabolism by not eating adequately, then why do people who eat lots get fat?

    There's more to it than just food, right? So if I said I want to work towards raising my metabolism, how would I go about to do that?

    People who eat lots usually have pretty fast metabolisms. That does not mean they can eat as much as they want. Just means that their maintenance number should be at the higher end for their body weight. Eating anything above that will still result in weight gain.

    There will also a limit to how much a metabolism can be increased. If your metabolism is already healthy you can not magically increase it noticeably higher without increasing weight and even that will be very little. If your metabolism has been significantly lowered you will need to eat at very small surplus for an extended period of time to increase it. This will result in some weight gain.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Get your fitness on with some good HIIT and resistance training.
  • j6o4
    j6o4 Posts: 871 Member
    Build some muscle. Eating more meals during the day does not boost up your metabolism, thats a myth. Eat as many meals as you need to take to hit your calories or macros.
  • scottb81
    scottb81 Posts: 2,538 Member
    The primary drivers of your daily metabolism are the calories burned to make your organs function, primarily the brain, liver, kidneys, and heart (70-80% or the daily resting energy expenditure). There is nothing you can do to significantly change those. In addition each lb of fat burns 2 cal per day and each lb of muscle burns 6 cal per day. So metabolism drops as you lose fat and rises as you gain muscle. http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dissecting-the-energy-needs-of-the-body-research-review.html

    There is also a small increase in metabolism after exercise as your body recovers and rebuilds..

    The only effective thing you can do to make your body burn more calories each day is to exercise.
  • bethany41h
    bethany41h Posts: 218
    Be sure to eat breakfast and keep eating small meals throughout the day and exercise, exercise, exercise! :)
  • Amanda241174
    Amanda241174 Posts: 38 Member
    Bump to read another time :)
  • sullus
    sullus Posts: 2,839 Member
    Small frequent meals and breakfast don't change your metabolism.

    Here are things that will:

    Exercise
    Stimulants
    Not eating for 48 hours (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10837292)
    A REALLY scary movie (or anything else that triggers adrenaline)
    Having More Muscle

    That's about it.
  • Joehenny
    Joehenny Posts: 1,222 Member
    Watch that vid by Layne Norton on Metabolic damage. It's called reverse dieting. The idea is to basically increase cals slowly over time, your body adjusts. I am reversing currently up 400 cals from where I was stuck at. I have friends on here and know of people who eat 4,000-5,000 daily and lose weight.

    Team 3dmj also has vids on it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9sFoJaurvo
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
    With the amount of weight you have to lose it is highly unlikely you have any metabolic damage.

    Dieting will lower your metabolism in 2 ways:

    - as you get lighter, you use less energy to move about. This is natural and just part of losing weight.
    - dieting does cause some suppression in your BMR, It is relatively small. Assuming you have not been eating at a very large deficit for a prolonged time, you reverse up at the end of the diet, it should come back up when you stop dieting.

    Assuming no metabolic damage, which, as I say, is highly unlikely that you have based on how much you have lost and how much you have to go (especially as it looks as though you have bee dieting for only a few months), then there really is only three ways to increase your metabolism:

    - eat more (which is not conducive to losing weight)
    - gain muscle (which will increase it by a small amount)
    - move more

    ^^this also assumed no metabolic medical issues such as PCOS or hypothyroidism

    Just eat to a reasonable caloric deficit and you should not have to worry about having issues with your metabolism.


    ETA: eating small frequent meals has no direct impact on your metabolism
  • jamielynas
    jamielynas Posts: 366 Member
    been consistently eating 3500-4000 cals a day for weeks, down 2lbs, do HIIT
  • TheBitSlinger
    TheBitSlinger Posts: 621 Member
    What, if anything, will help to change your metabolism? If it's true that you can lower your metabolism by not eating adequately, then why do people who eat lots get fat?

    There's more to it than just food, right? So if I said I want to work towards raising my metabolism, how would I go about to do that?

    The answer is... muscles. The more muscles you have, the more calories you burn. The only way to add muscle is to lift weights. When you lift weights, you have to provide enough food fuel, i.e. protein, for your body to create new muscle cells. Lifting, done right, will cause you to gain weight because muscle cells are more dense than adipose (fat) cells. You will lose fat, but it may take longer to see the results balance out on the scales.

    Unless you are extremely blessed genetically, you can lower your metabolism by eating too much, especially refined carbohydrates. Your body turns carbs into glucose. After years of dumping too many refined carbs into your system, the walls of your cells harden. In response, you body produces more insulin to force the glucose into your cells. It becomes a vicious circle, leading to type 2 diabetes. The glucose your body cannot use as energy will be stored in new fat cells.

    If you are lifting weights and/or doing cardiovascular exercise, you can also lower your metabolism by not providing the right fuel in the right amounts. If you are lifting weights and not providing fuel for new muscle cells, your metabolism will slow down and eventually will start to break down existing muscle cells to create new muscle cells, which is another vicious cycle.

    By the way, type 2 diabetes can be reversed. I have it, and by eating a calorie-restricted diet and avoiding refined carbs, my blood glucose levels are now largely controlled without the aid of medications.
  • Joehenny
    Joehenny Posts: 1,222 Member
    What, if anything, will help to change your metabolism? If it's true that you can lower your metabolism by not eating adequately, then why do people who eat lots get fat?

    There's more to it than just food, right? So if I said I want to work towards raising my metabolism, how would I go about to do that?

    The answer is... muscles. The more muscles you have, the more calories you burn. The only way to add muscle is to lift weights. When you lift weights, you have to provide enough food fuel, i.e. protein, for your body to create new muscle cells. Lifting, done right, will cause you to gain weight because muscle cells are more dense than adipose (fat) cells. You will lose fat, but it may take longer to see the results balance out on the scales.

    Unless you are extremely blessed genetically, you can lower your metabolism by eating too much, especially refined carbohydrates. Your body turns carbs into glucose. After years of dumping too many refined carbs into your system, the walls of your cells harden. In response, you body produces more insulin to force the glucose into your cells. It becomes a vicious circle, leading to type 2 diabetes. The glucose your body cannot use as energy will be stored in new fat cells.

    If you are lifting weights and/or doing cardiovascular exercise, you can also lower your metabolism by not providing the right fuel in the right amounts. If you are lifting weights and not providing fuel for new muscle cells, your metabolism will slow down and eventually will start to break down existing muscle cells to create new muscle cells, which is another vicious cycle.

    By the way, type 2 diabetes can be reversed. I have it, and by eating a calorie-restricted diet and avoiding refined carbs, my blood glucose levels are now largely controlled without the aid of medications.

    Carbs help raise your metabolism and your body produces insulin in respnse to all foods
  • SageGoddess320
    SageGoddess320 Posts: 2,589 Member
    I highly recommend toilet yoga to raise your metabolism!:laugh:
    toilet-yoga-640x348.jpg

    WIN!
  • TheBitSlinger
    TheBitSlinger Posts: 621 Member
    Carbs help raise your metabolism and your body produces insulin in respnse to all foods

    Lots of things, including some medicines, cause you to release insulin, which is a peptide hormone. Some things, like highly refined carbs (carbs that are broken down easily by the digestive tract), cause higher levels of blood glucose which causes more insulin to be released; some things, like protein and fat, cause less insulin to be released.

    Since high blood glucose levels stimulate the release of insulin, this allows glucose to be taken up and used by insulin-dependent tissues.

    Glucagon, also a peptide hormone, raises blood glucose levels too, but its effect is opposite that of insulin. Glucagon is released when blood glucose levels fall too low. Glucagon first causes the liver to convert stored glycogen into glucose, which is released into the bloodstream, and when the supply of glycogen is depleted, glucagon mobilizes fat, which is basically a store of energy. The fat breaks down into a component called free fatty acid and goes into the liver for energy.
  • judychicken
    judychicken Posts: 937 Member
    Bump
  • cafeaulait7
    cafeaulait7 Posts: 2,459 Member
    Just exercise, and preserve or build muscle, and don't eat at too high of a deficit. You can try to get the rocket science answers, but I find it's easier to just try the above before trying to fully understand all the research, lol.

    I find a huge difference in my own metabolism (well, ability to lose weight, which is a little different) by exercising compared to just calorie restriction. The science on that probably has to do with my PCOS and insulin metabolism, but I knew it long before I read about all of that stuff ;) Just try some of the suggestions and see what fits!
  • floridapanthergirl
    floridapanthergirl Posts: 87 Member
    definitely a bump to come back to. What is reasonable in terms of lowering body fat? I understand that dropping pounds and body fat at the same time is really tough. I am wanting to set a goal for this year in terms of body fat and am not sure where to go with it. I have about 30 pounds left to go and am about 40% body fat. Would like to be 30% by the end of the year. Is that reasonable?
  • SunofaBeach14
    SunofaBeach14 Posts: 4,899 Member
    Eat less and move more. You aren't going to get fit without putting in the work.
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
    definitely a bump to come back to. What is reasonable in terms of lowering body fat? I understand that dropping pounds and body fat at the same time is really tough. I am wanting to set a goal for this year in terms of body fat and am not sure where to go with it. I have about 30 pounds left to go and am about 40% body fat. Would like to be 30% by the end of the year. Is that reasonable?

    30lb in a year is totally reasonable and a good goal imo.

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