10 Simple Ways to Increase Metabolism

Credit to image used in pin goes to Max Pixel.  – Changes were made to the original image.

Most people want that one silver bullet to increase metabolism and kill weight gain for good. But there isn’t just one silver bullet to increase metabolism… there’s many of them! So while yes, you can’t eat just one food or do one simple task that will help you boost your metabolism, you can combine a few to get the results you want. And it doesn’t have to be hard.

It’s all about simpler changes in your lifestyle that can help to inspire you to make bigger changes and see bigger results. So once you start to apply these simple hacks to increase metabolism, you’ll start to see the changes and hopefully go on to take things a step further.

The General Ways to Increase Metabolism

Here is where I’m going to list the general ways to boost your metabolism and get it out of the way. Some of you may not know about them, so this is why I’m listing out the basics that people keep on stating time and time again. Then I can get to some of the lesser known ways to increase metabolism and help you lose weight.

Water and Sleep: I talk about this in more depth in my posts, 5 Ways to Lose Weight Without Really Trying and 6 Habits of Fit People, but the basic idea is that if you drink a certain amount of water (cold water specifically) throughout the day, you can give your metabolism a nice boost (it also increases your metabolism if you have it first thing in the morning).

And when you get enough sleep (8 hours), your body is able to perform certain functions that burn calories, and your metabolism is sped up due to the fact that your body knows you need to burn more energy since you’re inactive when unconscious (getting less sleep slows your metabolism).

Build Muscle Mass: Plain and simple, muscle burns fat (even when you’re at rest). So even if you’re doing simple weights at home while watching Netflix, building up that muscle will increase your metabolism and help your fat to dissipate.

Eat Spicy Food: Another simple and well known way to increase metabolism is to eat spicy foods (or just add a bit of spice to your meals). A compound found in peppers called capsaicin can cause an increase in calorie burning after eating spicy food.

Eat Breakfast: It turns out, morning is the peak time for your body to burn calories, and eating a great breakfast helps to jumpstart your metabolism for the day. So eating a hearty breakfast will give you plenty of energy to burn and keep you from binging later on (therefore making you gain weight).

Eat Small Meals Throughout the Day: Eating a small healthy meal every 2-4 hours is a great way to speed up your metabolism. It lets your body know that food is in plenty (when you skip multiple meals, your body goes into starvation mode and slows down your metabolism so you lose less energy.. basically it thinks you’re in trouble), and you’ll be able to increase metabolism speed to burn those calories you’re taking in.

Just don’t eat when you’re not hungry! That’s the key, because if you eat every 2-4 hours thinking your metabolism will speed up, but you’re not even hungry, that’s when weight gain starts to happen. Just listen to your body and eat a small healthy meal when you know your body needs it.

The Different Ways to Increase Metabolism

Now here is where I’ll get into the lesser-known ways on boosting your metabolism. These are the things that I’ve found will help weight loss in a great way.

Equal Out the Food Types

Our meals usually consist of three things, proteins, grains (carbs), and fats. Now whether you plan on following your blood type’s diet or not, this is important to remember. Having a certain amount of fats, proteins, and grain in your meal can help increase metabolism speed.

Let’s use breakfast as an example; let’s say you’re having oatmeal (carb), well you’ll want to pair it with greek yogurt (fat), and eggs (protein). The protein helps to fuel the fire to burn the fat which then ends up burning the carbs. So balancing it all out instead of just having eggs or just having oatmeal, can boost your metabolism and burn more calories when you eat.

Healthy Fats

Fats are something you should have in your diet to increase your metabolism… But please don’t think that having a double cheeseburger from In-N-Out or cajun fries from Five Guys is going to help you lose weight.

It turns out, consuming healthy fats from things such as olive and coconut oil, avocados, fish (salmon), nuts, seeds, and nut butters, lets your body know that you have good sources of energy coming in and encourages it to speed up your metabolism and burn calories (just remember that moderation is everything, too much can actually make you gain weight).

Interval Training

Now if you’re looking for a way to speed up your metabolism and gain (or retain) some muscle, then you can do interval training on your own. The basic idea: you sprint for 30 second to a minute (or however long you want), then stop and walk for the same amount of time. Rinse and repeat. It’s a great way to increase metabolism speed and see some weight loss (and I honestly like it better than going to the gym or doing crunches at home).

 

---

 

Depending on how many of these “silver bullets” you use, you can see a quicker or a more gradual change in the speed of your metabolism. So whether you try your blood type’s diet, add or take away certain foods, or even try interval training, they can all work together to increase metabolism speed. And when you start to see result, you may just feel more motivated to take things a step further and push a little harder.

Now if you have any tips on increasing metabolism speed, email me or let me know in the comments below!

This post contains an affiliate link(s), which means I will receive a small percentage (with no extra cost to you) if you make a purchase using the provided link. And lastly, I only recommend products that I know and trust when referring them to my readers.