Whenever I discuss the process of weight loss with someone one of the first things that always comes up is the role our metabolism plays. Very few people realise that metabolism has much more to do in the body than affect how much weight you lose or gain. Metabolism is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. Even when your body is at rest, you are still using energy for basic functions such as breathing, circulating blood, and repairing cells. The energy your body uses for these basic functions is called your basal metabolic rate. The faster your metabolic rate, the easier it is to burn the foods you eat for energy and maintain a trim physique. There are many factors that contribute to this and in this article we will discuss the various things you can do to either improve your metabolic rate or maintain it as you age.

While most of us associate metabolism with weight loss it is a vital part of our body’s internal system to keep the body healthy and well balanced. Just like many other parts of the body our metabolism is quite complex and involved with many essential, everyday chemical reactions in order to keep you alive. The body is a very complex design that is a system of many systems all running at once and all dependant on each other in order for us to function at our optimal level. If one system is not functioning well it compromises the health of the others in order to bring it up to the level it should be.

We tend to take for granted many of these systems and rarely consider the critical role they perform without ever shutting down, unless something goes wrong with our heart or lungs and then we are very aware. Many of these are part of our autonomic nervous system that regulates a variety of body process that takes place without conscious effort. This system is responsible for regulating involuntary body functions, such as heartbeat, blood flow, breathing, and digestion.

As these systems are designed to never shut down it means we must be extremely disciplined and educated about how to look after them.

This is where our metabolism can be disrupted by imbalances to one or several of these systems. What we see is weight gain but underneath there are several problems contributing to this problem which is why there is no simple “fix” that applies to every person. Extreme dieting or excessive exercise can exacerbate these problems and cause a multitude of other health problems. What you need to do is recognize how all of our systems interact with each other and the things you can do to balance them.

Hormonal imbalances and stress are two areas that can very easily disrupt the metabolic rate of a person who was in great health. This is why you cannot look only at metabolism as being an energy in versus energy out equation.

Hormonal Imbalances Ruining Your Metabolism

There is no denying in some people hormonal imbalance may be the underlying cause of their problems. I have seen many people who work out consistently and eat incredibly healthy food never change weight at all. No matter what they do they remain the same.

Many people do not really understand how our hormones really work and how much influence they have on everything we do in life. Hormones control much of what you feel, hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, energetic, hot or cold. They are like your body’s messengers, and are produced in one area of the body such as the thyroid, pass into your bloodstream where they can be sent to organs and tissues to modify structures and functions.

The underlying problem in type 2 diabetes you see a hormone imbalance that wreaks havoc on the body due to improper insulin and leptin signalling. In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas is still producing some insulin, the problem is that there is usually too much being produced on a chronic basis, and as a result the pancreas is unable to recognize the insulin and use it properly. In most cases this is a lifestyle created disease with a diet too high in sugars and sugar-forming foods and a lack of exercise.

They act like traffic signals telling your body what to do and when to do it so it can run effectively. There is no good or bad hormones, there is only good balance or bad imbalances of them. If one hormone is elevated then the opposing hormone is suppressed and when this happens you are guaranteed to suffer health problems.

Thyroid hormone imbalance in particular can cause a variety of problems with the body for your thyroid is responsible for producing the master metabolism hormones that control every function in the body. It is surprisingly very common with more than 12 percent of the U.S. population likely to develop a thyroid condition during their lifetime. It is more common in women than men due to their complex hormonal system.

How do you balance out these hormones?

For most of us it will come down to changing several destructive lifestyle habits into good ones. Some people will need more specific medical help but in most cases it will be associated with lifestyle factors that we will discuss shortly.

This brings us to the second important factor to discuss and one that can easily mess up your metabolism. That factor is STRESS.

Stress Can Disrupt Your Metabolism

The fastest way to ruin any health and fitness program is to expose someone to high levels of STRESS. It can derail the fittest and strongest person and cause a multitude of health problems that can take years to get right again. For some people it may result in weight gain, joint pain, headaches and migraines or in my case a skin disorder. There is no doubting that the current events around the world the last few years have been some of the most stressful for many people and the effects this is having on their health cannot be over-stated.

Stress is needed to prepare us for survival and this is called "Fight of flight" response. In a stressful situation the body secretes stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol to our arms and legs in order to help us either run away fast, or, stay and fight. This is good in life and death situations as these hormones will possibly save your life. But it is not good if this system is turned on all the time.

Whenever cortisol levels (your stress hormones) are chronically high, it suppresses your androgens (growth hormones), so things like testosterone and growth hormone are suppressed, which is not good if you are trying to add muscle to get stronger and fitter. We know that you need more muscle to speed up your metabolism so you are already off to a bad start.

Secondly as testosterone decreases, your gluco-corticoids or your stress hormones are elevated. One of the first reactions is that the body thinks that it’s going to have a long-term energy crisis, so to prepare for this situation our bodies start accumulating fat right around the belly button. This is your signal that this is a chronic stress related problem, not a lack of cardio workouts. Exercise is excellent to counter the damage of stress but it can also add to your stress if not used wisely.

You can read more about this in the articles below

• 3 reasons why people do not lose weight when they exercise
• Exercise for mental health

Don’t Blame Genetics Look At Your Lifestyle Habits

We tend to demonise our metabolism and blame it on our genetics for stubborn weight retention and say things like,”I am overweight because I have a really slow metabolism”. Or we look at others who are lean and trim and say, “I wish my metabolism worked as quickly as that!” While in some cases genetics play a part in this it is something you can change.

I myself used to receive comments all the time that the only reason I was lean because I had a fast metabolism and it really annoyed me for I knew it was not good luck or genetics that made me lean. I worked hard at staying in great shape. I was a keen sports person and spent endless hours of everyday playing sports and constantly moving. While I was not 100% perfect with my meals when I was younger, I ate small meals regularly and mainly drank water.

So, now that we know a bit more about what metabolism is, we will discuss the various things that influence this so you can get on top of it and give your body every chance of using the foods you eat as energy. As opposed to storing it as fat.

The More Muscle You Have, the Better

This is number one on the list for a very good reason as your muscle mass is the factor that has the biggest influence on your metabolic rate.

The breakup of the factors that influence your body’s metabolism over a 24 our period is as follows:

• Lean Muscle Mass = 66%
• Exercise = 17%
• Eating = 12%
• Body Temperature = 5%

(Reference: Metabolic Precision.com)

How much you weigh largely depends on the choices you make about food and how much physical activity you get. As you age, you tend to eat fewer calories mainly due to the amount of muscle you have decreases as you get older. Your muscle mass affects how many calories you need because muscle tissue burns calories, even at rest. Having less muscle decreases your calorie needs by decreasing your basal metabolic rate. Therefor it makes perfect sense to find ways to add muscle mass for more muscle equals a faster metabolism.

Many people do not realize that your body constantly burns calories, even when you're doing nothing. This resting metabolic rate is much higher in people with more muscle. Muscle uses about 3 times as many calories as fat per day just to sustain itself. That small difference can add up over time. After a session of strength training, muscles are activated all over your body, raising your average daily metabolic rate.

As we discussed earlier it is not all about calories and energy expenditure. Our muscles have an important role in regulating our hormones. And while there are some benefits to the size of muscles and how you look the benefits of strength training are so much more than that.

Here is a just a short list of the various benefits of using a strength training program to add muscle.

1. Muscle is the biggest influence on your metabolic rate. The more you have the faster your metabolism and the easier it is to lose weight
2. Muscle regulates hormones and prevents disease like diabetes and cancer often caused from insulin resistance
3. Muscle improves bone density and prevents bone fractures, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, and can even reverse arthritis.
4. Muscle prevents injury and improves stability across all joints
5. Muscle improves sporting performance by increasing speed and power.

Now before you go hit the gym and start crushing your body with intense workouts make sure you have a good plan based on moving well.

When people look to get in shape they believe that moving well will just happen automatically. All they have to do is get out there and get it done, and the body will fix any problems it encounters along the way by itself. Unfortunately, it does not work like this at all, and any stability or movement problems you currently have will be exacerbated once the volume of training is increased.

You will find the FREE REPORT below an invaluable resource.

Also the articles in the links below will give you a great explanation of how to choose the right exercises and methods to add muscle fast.

• Functional movement is everything and this is why
• Why you should never sacrifice exercise technique
• To build a strong body you need a solid foundation

Use Interval Training

We know that strength training is great, what about cardio? Cardio exercises like running and cycling can be a great way to get in shape but it may not produce the results you are looking for if you think long and slow is best. Also many people do not enjoy this activity and it can also take a long time if you plan to complete long slow boring cardio exercise. There is a better and that is using interval training.

Interval training is not a new thing to elite athletes who know how valuable it can be to their overall fitness and health. Several studies have confirmed that exercising in shorter bursts with rest periods in between burns more fat than exercising continuously for an entire session. This has been shown to hold true even when the session is not done at an extremely high intensity.

For example, in one such study, those who cycled for 40 minutes, alternating four-minute bursts at 90 % effort with two minutes of rest, improved their cardiovascular fitness by 13 %, and were able to burn 36 % more fat during a later hour-long moderate cycling session. Another study went one step further proving you can burn more fat exercising for 20 minutes than for 40 minutes!

In their trial, women either exercised for 20 minutes, alternating 8 seconds of sprinting on a bike with 12 seconds of exercising lightly, or exercised at a regular pace for 40 minutes. After exercising three times a week for 15 weeks, those who did the 20-minute, alternating routine lost three times as much fat as the other women! The researchers believe this type of exercise works because it produces a unique metabolic response. Intermittent sprinting produces high levels of chemical compounds called catecholamines, which allow more fat to be burned from under your skin and within your muscles.

The resulting increase in fat oxidation is thought to drive the increased weight loss. Again, one of the best parts of this shorter but harder training is that it cuts down on the amount of time you need to exercise, which is great if you don’t have time for hour-long cardio workouts. 

You can read more about this in the article - Why interval training is the secret to great fitness

Get More Sleep

You cannot achieve great health if you do not get quality sleep each night. Make no mistake about it this is as important as exercise and nutrition and anyone who is sleep deprived will suffer serious health problems, with weight gain being one of them.

Many people think we shut down at night but it is the exact opposite, the body's digestive system is in hyper-drive at night as it uses this time to repair damage cells and tissue caused from activities during the day. If our sleep is compromised so is our ability to heal our body and is why people with poor sleep are more likely suffer with serious illness and disease.

There is no doubting that the quality of sleep you get can have a massive effect on your waistline. Sleep deprivation can completely disrupt all of your hormones and send your hunger and appetite hormones out of whack. This is a problem that many night shift workers face and why they are more vulnerable to illnesses and struggle to stay in great shape.

One four-year joint study by the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University found that adults who regularly slept for only five hours a night increased their levels of hunger-inducing ghrelin by 14.9% and lowered their levels of appetite-suppressing leptin by 15.5%.

This means that they end up eating more than needed, resulting in extra kilos and body fat!

Our bodies are designed to follow the movement of the sun, moon and the earth. This is called circadian rhythm. When we abide by this law of nature our bodies can function at their best and allow our hormones to stay in perfect balance. Refer to the picture below of what this looks like.

You can read more about how to improve your sleep in this article – Why sleeping problems cause health problems

Eat at Regular Times & Chew Your Food Slowly

The body relies on balance and regularity. Eating at consistent times may help maintain metabolic balance. Also if you remember earlier we stated that the activity of eating increases our metabolism to some point for it requires energy to break the food down and digest it.

If a person eats a massive meal, then goes for long periods without eating, the body may burn calories more slowly and store more fat cells. By eating at regular times, a person can reduce this tendency and also reduce the portion sizes to ensure they do not over-eat.

Most of the time we should aim to eat every four hours to ensure we maintain correct blood sugar levels and avoid the dreaded “crash” that brings on food cravings. Many people who skip meals, don’t even realize that they’re doing it as they are so caught up in their work. It is only when the hunger pains become so prominent that they reach for any type of food to bring them back or over-eat for they are so hungry.

If you are more planned and pay attention to the signals your body is giving you, you will never make this mistake. Eating more frequently helps to prevent over eating and reaching for sugar laden foods to balance blood sugar levels.

The other thing that tends to happen when we someone is really hungry is they eat too fast. This can cause a series of problems and it can end up becoming a bad habit that will wreak havoc on your body. It is important to always eat your meals slowly.

One of the most important benefits of eating slowly is that it gives your body time to recognise that you’re full. It takes about twenty minutes from the start of a meal for the brain to send out signals of satiety. And it is fair to say that most people’s meals don’t even last that long!

The other problem is eating too fast can cause serious problems to your gut health. When you wolf down your food as seen in the picture above you take larger bites and chew less. This is bad news for your digestive system as your stomach has a hard time trying to break down big chunks of food into chyme—the sludgy mix of partially digested food, hydrochloric acid, digestive enzymes, and water that passes from your stomach into your small intestine.

When food isn’t properly broken down into chyme, it can cause indigestion and other GI problems. Large food particles make it difficult for the small intestine to absorb food molecules and nutrients we need. This type of eating depletes our body of valuable vitamins and minerals.

A study by the University of Rhode Island examined how eating speed affected the early stages of digestive processing by observing 60 young adults eat a meal.

• Slow eaters consumed 2 ounces of food per minute.
• Medium-speed eaters consumed 2.5 ounces of food per minute.
• Fast eaters consumed 3.1 ounces per minute. They also took larger bites and chewed less before swallowing.

This means that not only are fast eaters putting more food down in a given amount of time, that food isn’t as well-processed. 

If your meal makes you burp a lot or leaves you feeling bloated and sluggish, take a good look at how quickly you are eating. Just like me you might be blaming the quality of the food you ate, when really you just needed to slow down and give your body time digest your food properly. 

You can read more about this in the article – Are you ruining your health by eating too fast?

Eating enough calories

Eating too few calories can cause a person’s metabolism to slow down so the body can conserve energy. While it is good to not over-eat as obviously many people make this mistake, you can go too far the other way.

It has been scientifically proven that when you lose weight, your metabolism slows. This is called metabolic adaptation, and it’s perfectly normal. Metabolic adaptation is a natural defence mechanism against starvation.

Some people skip meals or use extreme calorie restrictive diets as a way to lose weight. Not only is this going to place their health at risk, for they are most likely to end up with vitamin and mineral deficiencies, it can negatively impact their metabolism. Eating meals that are not filling can have the same effect which is why we suggest to eat more protein (more on this shortly).

When you’re dieting, at a certain point, your body will send out signals of:

• Starvation alert!
• There’s not enough food to go around!
• Hold onto the fat reserves!

At that point, your Resting Metabolic Rate slows down. Metabolic adaptation can make things more complicated (and frustrating) for dieters who hope to continue or maintain their weight loss.

Once these signals are released the calorie restriction no longer has the same effect it did at the beginning of their diet. Next thing you see is that, they need to cut more calories just to maintain the same weight. This is your body’s way attempt of maintaining homeostasis to keep the system running well. If they do not cut the calories further, weight begins to creep back on even though they are eating the same as they were when everything worked the first time.

What people must be educated to understand is that Calories are not created equal, the source of the calories is what is important. 

Identical calorie counts from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, will cause entirely different metabolic effects on a person's body. The reason for the difference in metabolic effects is largely because different nutrients provoke different hormonal responses, and those hormonal responses determine how much fat your body will accumulate and hold on to. This is why the idea that you can lose weight by counting calories simply doesn't work.

Adult women will need between 1,600 and 2,400 calories a day, depending on their physical activity levels, and men need between 2,000 and 3,000.

There is several problems with calorie counting that you must consider.

1. You can’t really trust that the calorie (and macronutrient) numbers you see on food packages are accurate. The way they are calculated is surprisingly imprecise and inconsistent.
2. Plus, even if food package numbers were precise, once the food is cooked, or chopped, or blended, the amount of energy available for digestion and absorption changes.
3. Then there’s what happens once that food enters your body.
4. Calorie burn estimates with trackers like Fitbit are also very imprecise.
5. Your stress levels, your history of weight gain and dieting can all dramatically influence your body's calorie expenditure.

As you can see it is not as simple as knowing how many calories you’re taking in with food or burning up with exercise as this can fluctuate significantly due to several unique factors.

I love the info-graphics that the guys at Precision Nutrition create that give great visual descriptions of how this works.

(insert pic)

I highly suggest you read their material in the links below

• The surprising problem with calorie counting part 1
• The surprising problem with calorie counting part 2

Another great article to read with more detail on this is – Stop measuring your health by what the scales say

Try To Eat Protein with Every Meal

Protein is a food source which promotes recovery and rebuilding of cells in your body mainly for your organs and muscles, which is why it’s so important. Without the amino acids and nutrients from protein we cannot repair any damage.

Protein is essential when trying to losing weight or body fat for a several reasons.

• Protein helps you keep that all-important lean body mass (which includes connective tissues, organs, and bone as well as muscle).

The reason body-builders love protein shakes so much is they know it helps in the process of building muscle. We already know how important muscle is with regards to regulating hormones so it makes perfect sense to be eating quality protein with each meal.

To see more read this article – Everything you need to know about protein.

Make sure you Drink Enough Water

Your body needs water to process calories. If you are even mildly dehydrated, your metabolism may slow down. In one study, adults who drank eight or more glasses of water a day burned more calories than those who drank four.

When you become dehydrated, your liver will secrete a hormone that increases your blood sugar. As you begin to rehydrate your blood sugar levels will lower naturally.

The body's hormonal reaction to not drinking enough water is the same as any other stressful situation which can become a massive problem. Just a tiny 2% drop in our body's water supply is enough to completely disrupt our hormonal balance and create a chain reaction of problems.

Sometimes people mistake being hungry for being thirsty. A good way to find out if this is the case is to drink a large glass of water and wait 20 minutes to determine if you're really hungry or if you were just thirsty.

Many people who drink soft drinks may find this habit hard to kick but it is essential they learn to drink water instead of sugar loaded soft drink. Soft drinks contain caffeine, a mild diuretic that makes you urinate more, thereby eliminating water from your body. It also contains about 55 mg of salt, and when you take in salt and excrete water, you get thirstier. The reason why soft drinks contain so much sugar is because they have to mask the taste of the salt.

Most people are aware how much sugar is in these drinks and it is wise to avoid them at all costs. For such a simple thing to do it can have a massive impact on your attempts to lose weight and well worth the effort.

Move More Often During the Day

This one is really a no-brainer but it is amazing how many people neglect or ignore the value of incidental movement. Only recently I discussed this in great detail in the article - What is more important nutrition or exercise?

While lifting weights or doing interval training is a great start for improving your metabolism if that is all you do for the entire day you are not going to make serious inroads. This is what we call active but sedentary.

If you worked out for 30 minutes per day and the rest of your day you sat down, your total activity percentage of available time to move might be only 4% at best! In this example, the 30 minute workout while it is great to do and has some amazingly positive aspects, is pretty much cancelled out by the negative impact on the metabolism by the 96% of sedentary activity the rest of the day.

You would have got more benefit from 3 x 20 minute workouts spread out across the day. But even better than that you would be have much greater rewards by finding ways to incorporate many short walks and accumulating incidental movement as much as possible.

Small amounts of regular activity, even just standing and moving around throughout the day is enough to bring the increased levels back down. And those small amounts of activity add up – scientists have suggested that 30 minutes of light activity in two or three-minute bursts could be just as effective as a half-hour block of exercise.

We have all heard the term, sitting is the new smoking and it is very true. Sitting for too long slows down the body’s metabolism and the way the enzyme lipoprotein lipase breaks down our fat reserves. And as metabolism goes down your blood glucose levels and blood pressure go up! A double hit to your health.

One 2018 review found that standing or stepping at work was associated with lowered cardio metabolic risk (CMR) scores, weight, body fat, waist circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and fasting triglycerides, total/HDL cholesterol, and insulin. However, stepping rather than standing resulted in greater improvements to lower systolic blood pressure and insulin resistance.

If you have a desk job, try standing up for short periods to break up the length of time you spend sitting down. You can also try going for walks during the day or invest in a stand-up desk.

Drink Green Tea or Coffee

Green tea is something that regularly comes up when it comes to discussing what foods will help to increase metabolism and fat burning. Many claims have been made to suggest these teas help convert some of the fat stored in your body into free fatty acids, which may increase fat burning when combined with exercise. As they are low in calories, drinking these teas may be good for both weight loss and weight maintenance.

When it comes to coffee I am a bit reluctant to suggest it as a strategy to improve metabolism for the simple fact that people take this out of context.

While caffeine has been shown to very slightly increase metabolism, drinking 4-5 cups per day is more likely to cause negative health problems than what you are trying to do and defeat the purpose of using it.

A bit like the health benefits of dark chocolate and red wine. Sure, there is research there showing it does provide some small benefits but eating or drinking these foods in excess or everyday will have a negative impact on your health. The only reason I included this here is that it is something that is often suggested and while it may help in some way I would place more emphasis on the other factors already discussed.

How long does it take to speed up metabolism?

My answer to this question is how long is a piece of string? It is impossible to give a specific answer to this as there are so many factors to consider.

Today’s modern world is moving so fast and technology has allowed us to get things at the click of button that we have come to expect instant gratification in just about everything we do. Unfortunately, when it comes to improving metabolic rate, losing weight, adding muscle, or improving fitness, it takes a lot of time and a consistency to see the results you are looking for. There are no short-cuts to hard work and expecting instant results is unrealistic. The longer you have you been out of shape the longer it will take to get back in shape.

While some of the tips listed above may help increase your metabolism quickly, others may take longer. Additionally, these strategies should not be considered a quick fix, but rather, they should be incorporated into a plan with health-promoting benefits that includes eating a nutrient-dense diet combined with physical activity and optimum sleep to achieve long-lasting results.

The secret to staying in great shape and still being able to enjoy the finer things in life is CONSISTENCY!

Here is a really simple info-graphic you can use to help improve your health and speed up your metabolism.

Do You Need More Help?

I know there is a ton of information I have not included in this article but you will find everything you need to know about boosting your metabolism by getting your exercise and nutrition just right. I created this report in September 2020 to include ALL of the relevant information relating to exercise and nutrition for improving our overall health. This is not about fitness but about improving your overall health vitality. The Little Black Book features over 100 workouts for you to follow for improving strength and fitness. The ultimate training resource.

Click the image below to download your instant PDF copy.

Summary

There is no doubting that our metabolic rate plays a massive role in maintaining a healthy waistline and good energy levels during the day. However, as you can see from this article there is many things that can disrupt this system and cause a multitude of problems that may take some time to resolve.

By far the most important factor to consider is muscle mass. The more you have the better but this is difficult to improve if your diet and your recovery is not optimal. Your body will resist your attempts to do this if you are not in tune with all of the systems. The other major factor that can cause massive problems is stress. You must find a way to control your stress in your life or it will steal from the other systems and disrupt how your hormones interact with each other.

For more ideas and information on specific topics I may not have covered in detail be sure to check out our INDEX PAGE on the website that has over 200 of our best articles. These are all sorted into categories for quick reference so you can find what you are after more easily.

If you do need specific help with setting up an exercise and nutrition program please feel free to reach out to me for help by clicking the image below and we can set you up a free consultation to discuss how to get you started.

About The Author

Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 16 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.

Additional References:

• Obesity Paradox - By Carl J. Lavie M.D.
• Movement - By Gray Cook
• Corrective Exercise Solutions for the Hip & Shoulder - by Evan Osar
• Back Pain Mechanic - by Dr Stuart McGill
• Diagnosis & Treatment Of Movement Impairment Syndromes - By Shirley Sahrman
• Bending the Aging Curve -  Joseph Signorile
• Athletic Body in Balance - by Gray Cook
• How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek
• Heart foundation
• CSIRO
• Precision Nutrition 
• Nutrition & Physical Degeneration - By Weston A Price
• Big Fat Lies - By David Gillespie