We have all heard it or even said it before: “I can’t lose weight because of my metabolism.” It is convenient to blame our unwanted weight on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let’s look at the real importance of metabolism - and better yet, how you can get the most “burn” for your buck by recharging your metabolism.
In the most basic sense, metabolism encompasses each of the physical and chemical changes that occur within the cells of the body. Most often, however, metabolism refers to the process in which the body acquires and uses energy from food, so it really does have an important role in weight gain and loss.
Not everyone is given the same metabolism, and our rates actually change during our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism isn’t necessarily making excuses. Age affects metabolism, which will slow about 5% every 10 years after we turn 40, and by sex, as males usually burn more calories at rest than females, and by the amount of muscle mass you have (more muscle generally means a higher metabolic rate). Our genes also influences metabolism, not to mention having children, as well as whether a woman decides to breast-feed.
In spit of all of the wild cards, the fact is that when your calorie intake exceeds your metabolism, excess energy will get housed in the body as fat. Though many of the aspects affecting metabolic rate can’t be changed, thankfully, there are ways to rev up the metabolism you’re born with.
The first tenet is to eat the right foods in the correct quantities. When you miss a meal, your body turns on starvation mode, which slows metabolism to save calories, because it does not know when it will get to eat again. And when the metabolism slows, so does your weight loss.
When you finally do get food after skipping a meal, instead of using the calories in the food you’ve just taken in, your body transfers them to body fat to hold for the next “fast.” To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 - 6 small meals spread evenly throughout the day and try to eat close to the same times every day. Most importantly, never skip a meal.
You can also step up your metabolic rate with exercise, including both aerobic routines and weight training. Aerobic activities, such as running, biking and dancing, burn more calories in the short term, while weight training will build more muscle, which increases metabolism and burns more calories in the long term - even when you’re sitting still, muscle requires more calories to function than fat.
In fact, each pound of muscle burns 35 calories a day, while every pound of fat burns just 2 calories per day. Despite this, you might be surprised that the more weight you have, the faster your metabolism is likely to run. Simply put, the extra weight makes your body work harder to maintain its processes.
This is partly why it is nearly always easiest to drop weight when you begin dieting, and gets more difficult as you continue because, when you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at a high rate, so that even a minor reduction in calories will give you an immediate weight loss.
But what happens after that immediate loss, when a plateau occurs and motivation seems to go by the “weigh” side? Old cravings and compulsions can quickly come back, and when they do, do not overlook a valuable resource - lose weight hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious so that, in essence, you can get rid of food cravings. When we study why we snack, realizing why weight loss hypnosis works so well becomes evident.
For many of us, snacking has become a habit - maybe you do it automatically when you’re driving or watching TV or when you’re under stress. Hypnosis can actually reprogram your thoughts to stop those associations, leaving you to watch TV or drive without experiencing the need to eat.
One of the most successful lose weight hypnosis techniques for breaking the snacking cycle is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, which relies on working with the unconscious mind and getting it to use the same thought processes that are creating your appetite, to eliminate your appetite. NLP entails many years of study and practical experience for a hypnotherapist to learn and master, but positive results can come very rapidly and seem almost magical to someone who has always struggled with cravings.
NLP can be equally as imperative as exercise and motivation because, as you learned above, it can help make sure that you eat the proper kinds of foods at the right times, and this is a key element to turbo-charging your metabolism. If you want to keep your metabolism at full speed and make sure that all of hard work and exercise aren’t going to waste by succumbing to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings altogether.
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