You are probably blaming your stubborn fat on your slow metabolism believing it is a genetic misfortune of which little can be done. It’s time to get your facts straight with some game-changing realizations that will give you hope. Haven’t you ever wondered if metabolism is the sole culprit of your ever-multiplying pounds? If it is, is there absolutely nothing you can do to tweak it?
While it is true that metabolism is linked to your weight and is inherited, it is also true that there is something you can do to take matters into your own hands and tweak your genetic disposition. Although metabolism is associated with influencing our body’s energy needs, clean, healthy eating and a strict fitness regime can make the tables turn for even the most stubborn and lazy metabolic systems.
Exercising can help you with revving up your system along with healthy eating. There are plenty of foods that can organically help speed up fat burning. What you eat has a direct impact on your metabolic activity. The mechanism they work on is similar to cardio because they act as kick starters to calorie burning which helps you lose weight.
About Metabolism
To understand which foods can help you burn fat, understanding metabolism on from the grass root level can give you a deeper insight. Metabolism is a complex biochemical process where your body turns the food you eat into energy. The calories you take in with the help of oxygen convert to ATP which are packets of energy your body consumes to function.
Even when we are not moving at all our body has a basal metabolic rate for the latent chemical reactions that are going on in your various systems for you to breathe properly, eat, digest, think and even repair your body. Your basal metabolism depends on several predetermined factors including your body mass and composition, gender and age.
Factors that you can control every day and can help you trump your genetic disadvantage are:
- Thermogenesis AKA Food Processing: To break down the food you eat for energy also takes up energy and burns calories. Digesting your food can consume ten percent of the carbohydrates you are eating.
- Physical activity: As we all know, having a highly physically active lifestyle can keep us fit. This determinant by far is the most variable factor that you can influence the most.
Foods to Maximize Your Metabolism
By this point, you must be wondering what foods can maximize your metabolism. Be warned; all foods are not metabolically equal. Here are the top 5 foods:
Citrus Fruits
Citrusy fruits are not only delectable for summer but also great for losing fat. Vitamin C in lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit can help speed up metabolism to cut down your fat faster. Even 60 mg of vitamin C can fulfill your daily body intake but increasing your intake up to five hundred milligrams can boost your fat burning game accompanied with the exercise by at least thirty nine percent. While we discuss the metabolic hierarchy remember, grapefruit serves as the best citrusy, fat burning fruit.
Berries
With a high composition of dietary fiber, just one cup of berries can provide you with eight grams of fiber and sixty calories. Though you know, you will eat a lot more than just one cup! Blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries are great sources of fiber. The fiber in the berries is useful as it absorbs the calories and fat from other meals in your belly by soaking up and eliminating them before your intestines can absorb them.
Cereals High in Fiber
High-Fiber Cereals can rev up your metabolic rate by aiding in slow digestion, so you feel fuller and energized for longer hours, making you less hungry and munching on sugary mid-meal snacks. Fiber can also help in keeping the insulin levels in your bloodstream balanced that supports the prevention of fat storage.
Lean Proteins
Lean meat is great for maximizing your metabolism and burning up those unwanted fat stores. Lean meats like turkey, lean beef and chicken burn fat by demanding for more energy just to get out of your system. They require a lot of energy to digest. People who follow the Paleo-diet burn fat twice as much as those who have a high-carbohydrate diet. Along with that, protein can help preserve and protect your muscle mass when you lose weight helping the metabolism run at full speed. Just three ounces of skinless and boneless turkey breast (lean) can give you 120 calories and 26 grams of protein with a gram of fat.
Lean meat not only helps you curb your hunger cravings but is also rich in iron that is a major supporter of metabolism. Your daily requirement of lean meat can be fulfilled by taking three to four servings of food rich in iron such as fortified cereal and chicken.
For maximum results, take a good combination of fiber and protein to promote fullness while boosting metabolism.
Garlic
Nature’s powerhouse packed with high nutritional content can provide you with a range of health benefits. From boosting your immunity, slowing down aging, fighting disease to keeping your metabolic levels at an all-time high. Even latent traces of garlic in your meals and diets can quietly help you lose weight. Garlic has shown to increase the number of calories that are burned during everyday activities and decreasing your body’s fat production.
An ounce of garlic (approximately ten cloves), can provide you with the daily requirement of seventeen percent vitamin B6, fifteen percent vitamin C, six percent selenium, twenty-three percent daily requirement of manganese and a gram of fiber (per ounce). There is also iron, calcium, potassium, and copper in it.
Garlic also has anti-oxidizing. Allicin, a sulfur compound that provides it with that unique flavor and odor gives garlic its anti-oxidant trait. Anti-oxidizing helps in fighting disease and aging by eliminating free radicals. Allicin minimizes inflammation preventing cancer, diabetes, cholesterol and blood pressure. By chopping garlic, you can find the most of this anti-oxidizing compound. Let your garlic sit for ten to fifteen minutes after chopping or crushing to allow the Allicin to produce.
The best way to have your garlic with its full taste and health benefits is raw or roasted. Marinade your chicken with crushed garlic.
Remember, the best way to boost your metabolism and lose weight is to watch what you eat. Add these five foods to your diet and see the difference yourself.
