12 Ways to Reset and Boost Your Metabolism

  • Medical Reviewer: Mahammad Juber, MD
Medically Reviewed on 1/19/2023

What is metabolism?

Metabolism is the speed at which your body breaks down the food you eat. Ways to reset and boost your metabolism include exercising, breathing, eating foods that burn fat, and other strategies.
Metabolism is the speed at which your body breaks down the food you eat. Ways to reset and boost your metabolism include exercising, breathing, eating foods that burn fat, and other strategies.

Managing your energy, weight, and food intake can be challenging. An abundance of food choices makes eating a source of satisfaction, not just sustenance. Yet, as you age, your metabolism slows, making it hard to shed those tasty meals.

Diet and eating modifications are needed to boost and maintain metabolism. Fad diets allow for quick results, but they often fail in the long-term while healthy metabolic changes are not made. However, metabolism increasers can help to stabilize energy levels and weight management

Metabolism is the speed at which your body breaks down the food you eat. That food is then turned into energy. Your body's capacity to burn calories while at rest is your metabolic rate. This is your body's essential mode for attacking your fat storages. However, More calories are burned by faster metabolisms than slower ones. 

With age, your metabolism slows. Additionally, your muscle and bone mass will decrease while your fat mass steadily inclines. With a slowing metabolism, you will burn fewer calories needed for your body to maintain proper functioning. This pattern will continue unless steps are taken to avoid it. Fortunately, metabolism increasers can be incorporated into your life by tweaking a few daily habits. 

Ways to increase your metabolism

  1. Get more exercise: Add additional elements of working out to your daily routine. Or, exercise more. Add cardio to weights and stretching to burn more calories. Plus, diversify your routine for variability.  
  2. Breathe in, breathe out: This seems too simple, but it works. Breathing increases your metabolic rate. Deep breathing exercises add more oxygen to your body's cells. Plus, more energy is used. Studies have shown that your metabolism will increase by reducing your body's resistance to insulin after just a few minutes of deep breathing.
  3. Eat foods that burn fat: Protein is a fat-burning ingredient that has been shown to speed up metabolism. So, it should be eaten with every meal daily. In addition to being a building block for fat-burning lean muscles, the body uses more calories to digest protein than other food sources you eat.
  4. Eat a lot of healthy snacks: Many may think eating snacks whenever you are hungry will make you gain weight. This is not true — you can snack and still be toned. Studies show that snacking will keep insulin and blood sugar levels stable. This works great to speed up your metabolism and is much more productive than holding fat cells in the body, which is what starving yourself will do.
  5. Go to bed: Research shows that improper sleep patterns affect the frontal lobe of your brain. When the activity is abnormal, your impulse control and ability to make controlled decisions are decreased. This potentially affects your metabolism, so a good night's sleep is important. 
  6. Have some green tea: You may want to consider trading in your mocha latte full of sugar and milk for a glass of metabolism-boosting green tea. Green tea contains a substance called catechin. Catechins can increase your metabolism's calorie-burning potential overall by 4%. It can prevent fat cells from forming while increasing your energy output.
  7. Interval training at high-intensity levels: This is a simple way to boost metabolism. Exercise at maximum intensity in regular (3-5) intervals for 15 minutes. Research shows that more calories will burn off during the proceeding 24 hours of an intense cycle circuit than regular cardio for an hour. As such, this could burn an additional 100 calories a day. 
  8. Drink H20: Drink more water to speed up your metabolism. You can drink water to get fuller before meals or you can drink cold water so your body will have to burn calories to warm up. This simple tip can speed up metabolism and establish lifestyle habits with sustainable results.
  9. Eat chocolate. Eat chocolate, preferably dark chocolate. It has high levels of theobromine, which stimulates adrenalin that speeds up metabolism. Try buying chocolate bars with 70% or more cocoa content to satisfy sweet cravings and boost metabolism. 
  10. Some like it hot and spicy: This is a metabolic booster that you can taste. Capsaicin is an ingredient found in hot foods like chili peppers. It gives them their spice and helps you burn off more energy at rest by increasing body heat. The increase in body heat is called thermogenesis, which burns energy. 
  11. Eat every meal: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but do not skip the other ones. The body needs food to burn calories as it digests your meals.
  12. Chill out: You can burn calories at rest by decreasing the temperature in your house. If you can, turn down your thermostat to about 63 degrees Fahrenheit. This will help you to burn about 17 percent more calories as you rest. How? It increases your metabolism as your body tries to stay warm.

Keep your metabolism upbeat while you age

While you try to maintain your weight and speedy metabolism levels, don’t focus only on drastic changes. Little things can help. Do not try to change your diet completely. Instead, focus on improving the one you are on. Try to implement vegetables, fruits, and good fats. You may think you need to eliminate fat from your diet completely, but that isn’t true. Healthy fats help to control your weight and maintain your metabolism. Fill meals with healthy foods devoid of processed products and refined sugar. It will boost weight loss while unwanted pounds will eventually shed. 

QUESTION

According to the USDA, there is no difference between a “portion” and a “serving.” See Answer
Medically Reviewed on 1/19/2023
References
SOURCES:

Farr Institute: "Are Metabolism Boosters an Effective Way to Increase Metabolism?"

Harvard Health: "Small tricks to help you shed pounds and keep them off."

Magn Reson Med: "Reproducibility study for free-breathing measurements of pyruvate metabolism using hyperpolarized (13) C in the heart."

Men's Health Magazine: "10 ways to boost metabolism."

Phytomedicine: "Recent findings of green tea extract AR25 (Exolise) and its activity for the treatment of obesity."

Piedmont Healthcare: "5 ways to boost metabolism."

Women's Health Magazine: "What Is The Metabolic Reset Diet And Can It Help You Lose Weight?"