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Issue # 003 - Understanding Metabolism
February 1, 2014

Understanding Metabolism
Factors that Decrease Metabolism that we have no Control Over:

Age: As we get older (around 40 and plus)

Family DNA: There are many of us that are born into families that didn’t come with the skinny gene (I know all about this) I’m one of them. If your parents had to watch their weight, guess what, you probably do to.

Sex: According to multiple studies men burn more calories than women. This is because men have more muscle than women and you burn more calories to maintain muscle because it is an active tissue.

Medical conditions: Ones such as hypothyroidism, diabetes and Prader-Willi Syndrome.

Understanding Metabolism
Factors that Increase Metabolism that we do have control over:

Here are 7 ways to help you burn more calories.

1) Food has got to be the biggest area that can help us as we can control the amount of calories we ingest. We all know the drill, eat healthy foods and try to avoid the junky stuff.

2) Exercise can help us burn more calories and the best part is we have full control of what type of exercise and how intense a work out we want to achieve. We all know a more intense workout burns more calories but if you’re just getting back into the swing of things start off slow.

3) As mentioned above more calories are burned to maintain a muscular body so building a little extra muscle will help. You don’t have to pump big iron just pump little ones, it all helps.

4) Drink lots of water or herbal teas to burn extra calories. Lack of hydration can slow down your metabolism. Herbal teas can give you a nice change from constantly drinking water.

They come in a plethora of flavors and as long as you don’t add sugar to them they are calorie free.

5) Other beverages we can drink that can help are coffee and certain teas such as green, black, white and oolong teas, as they contain caffeine and most offer antioxidants (that’s one coffee does not have).

6) The hotter spices can increase your metabolic rate, so if you enjoy a little extra heat, add some chili peppers to a meal. I enjoy adding a little cayenne pepper to my morning tea or lemon water.

7) Eating lots of protein also increases metabolism, that’s why protein diets are so popular.

Protein diets, such as the holiday diet do work but are not recommended for more than 2 weeks at a time. If you choose to take this route try to stick to healthy lean meat choices.

So take every opportunity to increase your metabolism and burn those calories away.

Until next time

Wishing you health and happiness

Catherine :)

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