How to Boost Your Metabolism

If you missed last week's email on energy expenditure and how many calories you need per day, go check it out here. 
 
In that email and the previous week's [Stop Massively Restricting Calories], I explained how eating too little for an extended period of time, like repeatedly going on very restrictive diets, causes the body to adjust to the lower energy intake by adjusting its metabolic processes. 

But what actually is metabolism? And do all the foods and supplements and workouts claiming to boost it work?

Metabolism refers to all the chemical processes that take place in the body to sustain life -- things like breathing, circulation, digestion, excretion, muscle contraction, muscle synthesis, and brain function for which the body must use or convert energy. 

(Remember, calories are units of energy.)

"Boosting" or "revving" your metabolism would mean using and converting more energy. 

There are a few ways to do this: 

1. Exercise 

Exercise makes up the smallest portion of our Total Daily Energy Expenditure.
The current Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans advise 150 minutes of
moderate-intensity exercise per week, with two days of strengthening
activities. If you're already exercising regularly (3+ times per week), you're
probably good.

If you're only exercising once or twice a week or you're kind of phoning in those
workouts, increasing your intentional exercise to meet or exceed the
recommendations will help.

2. Increase lean muscle mass

The Physical Activity Guidelines advise two days of muscle strengthening
activities. It's good for strength, bone health and…metabolism.

Muscle tissue is metabolically active. It requires energy to contract muscles and
to break down muscle tissues and rebuild it (which is what's happening when
you train). Adipose, or fat, tissue, on the other hand, is for storage, and it does
not require energy to maintain.

If you want to increase your BMR, or the amount of energy your body needs at
rest, increasing the amount of lean muscle tissue in your body will help.

3. Eat more food

Hear me out. The Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) is the amount of energy your
body requires to digest and absorb the food you eat and send all the nutrients
where they need to go to work on all those internal processes. It makes up
around 10% of your daily energy expenditure.

If you are eating as little as possible, you're doing your metabolism a
disservice. Things like juice and shakes don't require as much energy to break
down, and when your body doesn't have enough energy coming in, it wants to
conserve what it has as much as possible. This is why we often feel tired,
lethargic, or low-energy when dieting: your body wants you to move as little as
possible to save as much energy as possible, in order to burn fewer calories.

Eating more -- in line with your body's needs, of course - will keep your
metabolism humming along as intended AND give you the energy you need for
living your life.

4. Move More

Exercise makes up the smallest portion of our TEE, but one of the biggest
chunks of energy expenditure comes from Non-Exercise Active
Thermogenesis, or all the calories we burn doing daily activities.

That means the more movement you get throughout the day, not including
exercise, the more calories you'll burn. Think things like:

• Parking further away

• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator

• Going into the grocery store or Target instead of getting it delivered

• Taking the dog for a walk instead of just letting it out in the yard

• Getting up, stretching, and moving around each hour instead of sitting at

• your desk in one position for hours on end

What about foods and supplements?

There are some substances, like caffeine and capsaicin, that increase
thermogenesis, aka the body's heat production, which will increase the amount
of calories burned. Those increases are minimal in terms of metabolism as a
whole, and some of those substances can have side effects.

A better way to boost metabolism without shelling out a lot of money for minimal gains is to move more, build lean muscle mass, and eat the right amount of food for your body, preferably getting a range of nutrients to keep all those metabolic processes running as intended.