14 Proven Ways to Speed ​​Up Your Metabolism and lose weight

To lose weight faster it is useful to speed up your metabolism / metabolism, but how do you do that?

In this article, you will find the 14 scientifically proven ways to increase your metabolism. These tips will make it easier to lose weight and stay slim.

This is the most complete list about speeding up your metabolism you will find!

What you will learn in this article:

• Which foods speed up your metabolism
• What are the best sports for your metabolism
• Many tips and tricks to give your metabolism that extra boost

What is Metabolism?

Your metabolism, or metabolism, is all the biochemical processes that take place in cells and organisms. The body converts nutrients into energy. Speeding up your metabolism leads to a higher calorie burn, making it easier to lose weight and stay lean.

I have categorized the ways of speeding up your metabolism into 3 different parts, namely:

• Accelerate metabolism with food
• Accelerate metabolism with sport
• Accelerate metabolism with other things met

10 Ways To Speed ​​Up Your Metabolism With Food

Way #1: Eat Protein

When you eat, your metabolism speeds up for several hours. This is also known as the thermic effect of food.

But with some macronutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates ) this effect is greater than with others. These are the numbers from a study:

• Fats: speed up your metabolism by 0-3%
• Carbohydrates: speed up your metabolism by 5-10%
• Proteins: speed up your metabolism by 15-30%!

Proteins are clearly the winner!

But not only that, because in another article I already mentioned that proteins make you feel full. Breakfast with proteins leads to the following things:

• People think 60% less about food
• People are 50% less interested in snacks in the evening
• People eat more than 400 calories less per day! 

In short, eat enough protein and start the day with a fried or boiled egg, meat, tuna, poultry, nuts or seeds!

Way #2: Skip Meals

In general, people have the following two beliefs:

• 1) Never skip meals, especially breakfast, because:
• It's unhealthy;
• It slows down your metabolism.
• 2) To speed up your metabolism you should eat 5 to 6 times a day;
• If you eat less, you enter 'starvation mode'.

It was never clear to me what it was based on. There is not a single source reference that I have been able to find!

Science is at odds with these beliefs and says just the opposite. This one says:

• 1) Regularly skip meals, especially breakfast, because:
• It is healthy;
• It speeds up your metabolism and fat burning.
• 2) To speed up your metabolism, skip meals or fast for several days;
• If you do not eat anything for more than 4 days, you will enter 'starvation mode'.

Fasting for shorter periods speeds up your metabolism. For example, a study with 7 women and 4 men shows that your metabolism speeds up by 10% if you fast for 36 hours. If you fast for longer than 3 days, your metabolism will slow down .

Find out more about intermittent fasting here

Way #3: Have a Cheat Day!

If you eat healthy, you sometimes have the desire to eat something unhealthy.

You might think that acting on this desire will destroy your weight-loss goals, but science doesn't quite agree.

A cheat day has many advantages. A cheat day means that you eat what you want to eat one day a week. There are, however, two guidelines:

• You don't eat more than twice what you normally eat
• You choose a fixed day of the week such as Saturday or Sunday

There are a large number of benefits of a cheatday , namely:

• Your metabolism speeds up by 6.6% for lean people and 2.7% for obese people
• A higher production of the hormone leptin, which gives the brain the signal to burn more belly fat
• The hormone ghrelin, which causes a feeling of hunger, decreases for about 3 days
• You can go all out for a while!

Way #4: drink more (cold) water

You understand that soft drinks and fruit juices from the supermarket are bad for your weight. So when I talk about drinking water, I mean pure water like from the tap or a bottle.

By drinking water you can temporarily speed up your metabolism.

Studies show that you burn 24-30% more calories an hour after you drink half a liter of water. This effect can be even greater if you drink cold water.

How come? Well, the thermal effect of cold water is greater. In short, it takes the body more energy to heat up the water. For example, 40% of the thermal effect appears to be heating the water from 22 to 37 degrees.

Way #5: Drink Tea

As mentioned, drinking water increases your metabolism, but you can also speed up your metabolism with tea.

For example, research shows that greentea and oolong tea can speed up your metabolism by 4 to 5%.

Green tea and oolong tea also help burn fat.

The fat burning of green tea extract is 17% higher than a placebo extract.

Fat burning accelerates by 12% with oolong tea compared to drinking water.

Way #6: drink coffee

Although the studies are more than 20 years old, coffee appears to speed up your metabolism by 3 to 11%.

Just like drinking green and oolong tea, coffee speeds up your fat burning .

At the point about a cheat day, it turned out that only slim people experience a significant metabolic increase and not people with obesity.

We see this more and also with coffee. For example, the effect appears to be higher in slim people than in obese people.

Way #7: Eat spicy

Red peppers contain a substance called capsaicin. This is the substance that makes peppers hot.

By eating these peppers you can speed up your metabolism. Just don't expect miracles, because a study predicts that you burn about 10 extra calories per meal.

Besides the fact that this does not have much effect, it can also confuse your intestines from eating too hot. Westerners are less adapted to spicy food, so we have a less effective enzyme system to break down this food.

Way #8: Eat Coconut Oil

Coconut oil consists of medium-chain fatty acids. These, just like butter and grass-fed butter (my favorite!) can speed up the metabolism.

A daily intake of 30 ml of coconut oil can help overweight people to get a tighter tail.

Preferably choose extra virgin coconut oil in a glass jar, and without the smell being removed.

Way #9: Eat Seafood

Seafood such as seaweed and fish (especially white fish) are excellent sources of iodine. You don't need bread anymore!

Iodine is a mineral that you need for a properly functioning thyroid gland . Iodine increases the production of thyroid hormones.

The thyroid hormones affect your metabolism, among other things. In short, eating seaweed on a regular basis can lead to a faster metabolism.

Way #10: Enough Iron, Zinc and Selenium

Of course, iodine is not the only one that has an effect on your metabolism.

For example, a deficiency of iron, zinc and selenium appears to have a negative effect on your metabolism. In short, it slows down your metabolism.

• Iron: eat plenty of meat, poultry, and/or eat a lot of vegetables and fruit so that the body absorbs iron faster.
• Zinc: Eat plenty of meat, poultry, eggs, shrimp, oysters, mussels, nuts and seeds.
• Selenium: eat enough meat, fish and products such as garlic, onion, broccoli, nuts and seeds.

Bonus tip: eat dark chocolate

Chocolate naturally contains cocoa. There is not yet any really hard evidence that cocoa speeds up metabolism in humans.

However, mouse studies show that cocoa (heated cocoa) accelerates combustion.

I do recommend that you eat as pure chocolate as possible. That tastes a bit bitter, that's true, but it's better than chocolate that is full of sugar. You can always mix dark chocolate with something else.

2 ways to speed up your metabolism with sport

Way #11: Do Strength Training (Women Also!)

By doing strength training you can boost your metabolism by 9 to 11%. The afterburn effect is the largest in this form of sport.

This effect means that you burn extra calories after a workout. The longer and in particular the more intensely you have exercised, the greater this effect is.

In short, don't just look at the calories you burn during exercise, but also afterwards.

Increasing your muscle mass also has benefits for your figure. This will give you a sexier figure instead of getting skinny if you only do cardio.

In addition, an advantage of more muscle mass is that you burn more calories at rest during the day.

Way #12: Do Short High Intensity Training

In addition to strength training, a short high-intensity training is a very effective way of exercising. Not only do you lose more than 7 times more fat with this than with running, but you also gain muscle mass, unlike cardio.

In addition, it is sufficient to do this 3 times a week for 20 minutes. In short, it is  better to throw weight in the trash with running .

A study with an intensive 45-minute spinning workout showed that participants burned an average of 519 calories, with an additional 190 calories added after 14 hours.

In short, the afterburn effect increases the number of calories burned by almost 37%. A big boost in your metabolism!

Other studies do show somewhat lower numbers.

2 other ways to increase your metabolism

Way #13: Get enough sleep and relax

When people sleep 4 hours for 5 days, their metabolism drops by 2.6%.

Doesn't sound too bad yet, but there are more studies that find problems with sleep deprivation. Here are some results:

• Sleep deprivation is associated with a 55% higher risk of obesity in adults and 89% in children
• A lack of sleep leads to fluctuations in the hormones leptin and ghrelin, which means that appetite is poorly regulated
• When pilots miss 15 hours of sleep in a week, their cortisol levels rise by 50-80%

Stress can have adverse effects . Long-term stress makes it anti! stress hormone cortisol. This hormone mainly leads to fat storage around the abdomen and increases appetite. That is doubly annoying!

When your cortisol level increases, you get a higher blood sugar level  and a slower metabolism.

Way #14: take a cold shower

There is no hard evidence yet, but cold showers probably lead to a faster metabolism.

The explanation is quite logical. The body has to be able to warm itself up and needs energy for that.

In the way about 'drinking cold water' we already saw that 40% of the energy that the body uses to process the water has to do with increasing the temperature of the water.

According to the AMC, 30 seconds is already sufficient for a good result, with absenteeism already falling by 29%.

By stimulating brown fat you would burn more calories, thereby speeding up your metabolism. Or just take an ice cold bath.

* Disclaimer: never expose your body to intense cold for more than 5 minutes. You will then have the full effect for a long time and longer can lead to hypothermia!