Improving metabolism

What is metabolism: Simply stated, it is the breakdown of the food in the body and its transformation into energy. Metabolism is a series of life-sustaining chemical reactions and transformations within the cells of a living organism. These reactions allow the organism to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Where there is a breakdown there has to be a build-up too; without going in detail, the breakdown is also called catabolism and the build-up anabolism. Both catabolism and anabolism comprise metabolism.

Often, women complain about how ‘slow’ their metabolism is and blame genes, stress and luck for it. Actually, there are many factors that are responsible for metabolism, example – with age the metabolism slows down; also, the female gender takes more time to burn the calories than men.

However, one can improve the metabolism by lifestyle changes:

• Water: Low water content in the body slows down the metabolism. The body processes calories better in presence of water. Keep sipping water throughout the day to improve metabolism.
• Move: Do not sit idle. Move the whole day long. Also, go for long walks, run or just join a gym.
• Frequent food: During wake hours, eat every 3 hours. Long gaps in between meals slows down the metabolism and can make you feel sluggish. Have healthy snacks between usual meal times. This is good to normalize weight as lunch and dinner will also be smaller portions if frequent meals are had.
• Avoid energy drinks: They might give you the high and improve performance but after a few hours make you lethargic. In the long run are known to cause health problems. Fresh lime water with a dash of sugar and rock salt is useful too.
• Eat chillies: Some experts say that chillies in moderate amounts in foods boost metabolism due to some natural chemicals that they contain.
• Have more proteins: The human body burns more calories when proteins are eaten than of carbs and fat. Experts suggest to eat more protein for dinner (fish, eggs, nuts, lean beef etc.) to improve metabolism.
• Avoid coffee: Sip green tea to give your metabolism a boost. Green tea also helps burn more calories during workout. Avoid coffee.

Be determined to follow a lifestyle as above if you want to improve metabolism.