Welcome to 2018! A fresh new year to play, create and achieve! Every year has unlimited potential. We can make anything happen when we focus our mind. Including improving our health and controlling our waistline.
If you are one of the many that committed to yourself about being healthier this year, we applaud you. We'd also like to help you along the journey in 2018. The path to better health is made up of many little steps or improvements. It's done by shifting unhealthy habits to healthy ones.
A great place to start is with your metabolism. Metabowhat?! Your metabolism isn't a condition, it's your body's furnace. It is responsible for turning calories into energy.
Our metabolism is constantly burning calories and converting them to energy. Some of us have faster metabolisms than others. A faster metabolism will burn more calories throughout a day than a slower one.
If we create an energy deficit we lose weight. If we have an energy surplus, we gain weight.
When we combine a low calorie diet with a fast metabolism we create weight loss. It's fairly easy to determine how to reduce our calorie intake. It's not so easy to think about how to increase our metabolism. Here are a few ways to stoke your internal furnace and burn more calories daily.
- Eat More Protein - Digesting our food requires energy. We get energy from calories. Protein requires the most energy for digestion. If we are following a low calorie diet and high protein content, we'll naturally have fewer calories to burn off later.
- Eat Breakfast - It's the most overlooked meal of the day. It can wreak a weightloss plan by being skipped. Start your day by breaking the fast and eating a healthy, high protein breakfast. Choose to make this the biggest meal of your day. It will ignite and fuel your furnace to burn more calories daily.
- Sleep - This is also commonly overlooked. If our body doesn't get the proper 6-8 hour downtime each night to repair and recover it can't regulate our weight properly. If we consistently get little sleep each night the stress hormone cortisol will slow down our furnace and encourage our body to store fat. Use this as an excuse to go to bed early or sleep late.
- Move - Be aware of how much time you stay seated or lying down each day. These positions require very little energy and slow down our furnace. If you stay active, your body must support the energy requirement by burning more calories. If you commit to working out multiple times per week your furnace will burn even hotter.
- Drink More Water - Water is vital to all of our body's systems. This includes our metabolism. Water is a transport vehicle for nutrients into our cells and waste out of our cells. It's also vital for maintaining body temperature. Simply making sure you get 64oz or more per day can lead to immediate weight loss.
