Burn More Calories with These 4 Metabolism Hacks

Your metabolism refers to how many calories you burn throughout the day. Your metabolism is comprised of several influencing variables such as your basal metabolic rate, the thermic effect of food, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and the energy expended through conscious exercise or physical activity. Here are four metabolism hacks that will help you burn maximum calories throughout the day.

1. Lift Heavy Things

Your basal metabolic rate is how many calories your body burns naturally at rest to maintain functionality. Your basal metabolic rate is highly dependent on the amount of lean muscle mass you have, therefore someone like a bodybuilder with a high amount of muscle mass and low body fat will have a dramatically higher BMR than someone with little muscle mass. Because of this, it is extremely important that both men and women adhere to some form of a resistance training program aimed at increasing lean body mass and promoting secretions of important hormones that regulate metabolism such as growth hormone, testosterone, and thyroid hormone T3, T4, and TSH.

2. Eat More

It seems counter-intuitive but if you have been dieting, have maintained a low-calorie diet for a significant amount of time, or have had an eating disorder where calories had been extremely restricted; it is highly likely that you have developed an adaptive metabolism. This means that as a result of extremely low-calorie conditions, several physiological mechanisms and hormones in your body have adjusted as a survival mechanism. If you begin to slowly increase your caloric intake, you can reverse the effects of metabolic adaptation by increasing the thermic effect of food and bringing your leptin levels back up.

3. Boost Your Protein

Protein promotes the highest levels of satiety of all the macronutrients, which means by eating more protein you will feel more full throughout the day. Additionally, protein has a greater thermogenic effect than the other macronutrients. The thermogenic effect of food (TEF) is a measure of energy that your body needs to digest food.  What this means is that protein is harder for your body to digest and thus takes more energy than does fat or carbs. The TEF of protein is 25%, meaning 25% of the calories of each gram of protein is burned off through digestion, whereas the TEF of carbohydrates is 5%, and is only 2% for fats.

4. Perform HIIT Training

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is far more effective than Low Intensity Steady State (LISS) because it takes less time, promotes anabolic hormonal secretions which allows maintenance of muscle and strength, and ultimately does not seem to cause a lowering of metabolic rate over time. High-intensity cardio causes long-term metabolic adaptations that enable you to increase your capacity to burn fat even when you rest.