Boost Metabolism Naturally with Vitamins and Supplements

Good nutrition, hydration and exercise are all important for a healthy metabolism. Taking a daily multivitamin and/or minerals supplement can help to meet the daily nutritional needs and help maintain your energy while your system adjusts to consuming less calories. But more pointedly, select supplements have demonstrated the specific ability to enhance metabolism. For instance, calcium is necessary for bone health and has demonstrated benefits for helping to maintain weight.

In this article, we discuss three steps involving select supplements to add to your daily regimen to get your metabolism in gear quickly and easily. Here's how to boost metabolism naturally.

1. Add green tea to your diet. People have known about the benefits of green tea for ages. Green tea also boosts your metabolism in a few ways. First, substituting green tea for coffee will prevent your body from producing extra insulin. Insulin slows your metabolism and adds that extra weight to your belly and around your middle. Secondly, green tea tricks your body into thinking it is full. Third, it accelerates cell function, which speeds up your metabolism. Dr. Nicholas Perricone of Yale University, better known for his Perricone skincare line and anti-aging book, stated on Oprah in 2004 that just the simple change of substituting your morning cup of coffee with a cup of green tea would cause you to lose ten pounds in six weeks. How can you lose this much weight safely? The medical reasoning according to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (December 1999) says, "Green tea has thermogenic properties and promotes fat oxidation beyond that explained by its caffeine content per se." In laymen's terms, green tea helps burn fat. Considering all of its benefits for your heart and skin and overall health, green tea makes for a very easy way to jumpstart your metabolism.
   It is readily available. If you do not like the taste of green tea, some resources for quality flavored teas include Adagio Teas and Stash Tea, who feature flavors such as strawberry, tiramisu, peach, chocolate and pina colada, taking away the bitter taste. Green tea also comes in a vitamin supplement form both in a pill and in a concentrated liquid drop form. Resources include Dr. Brandt's water booster green teas (including Lo-han, which reduces sugar cravings), and Pure Inventions Tea drops as well as store brands produced by Vitamin Shoppe and GNC. Green tea vitamin supplements are made by companies such as Natrol and Nature's Bounty.
2. Add natural supplements that enhance muscle tissue activity. The second way to boost your metabolism via supplements is the use of vitamins that help the development of muscle. Two supplements include DMAE and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), both of which increase muscle tissue without steroid use. DMAE causes increased energy levels. PsychologyMagazine (2001) says that by supplementing with DMAE while engaging in muscle-building activity, the user may notice "shorter recovery times and improved athletic performance. DMAE also plays a role in muscle contractions (by being a precursor to ACh)." Two reputable companies selling DMAE include TwinLabs and Vitamin Shoppe. CLA Studies have shown a body fat-lowering effect. Some studies suggested that CLA may have a tendency to increase lean body mass. Muscles burn more calories than fat, so the higher ratio of muscle steps up your metabolism exponentially. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even when you are at rest.
   DMAE and CLA are also popular as beauty and skin tone enhancing vitamins, so these are often expensive supplements. However, you can find these cheaper at GNC, and brands such as Nature's Made, Nature's Bounty and Natrol.
3. Use antioxidant vitamin supplements to maximize your muscles' calorie burning capacity. The third way to boost your metabolism is to help your muscles with antioxidants. Healthy muscles burn the most calories, even when at rest. Vitamins C and E are powerful antioxidants that help to fight free radicals and protect the cells in your muscles. The removal of these wastes from your cells means your body can function more effectively and accomplish more, as well as feel less sluggish. The B vitamins are also important to support metabolism and help with energy production so you are not exhausted while dieting. Perhaps one of the most powerful antioxidants that are readily available is alpha lipoic acid. Dr. Bruce Ames, a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley says that while the production of energy in the mitochondria in your cells is highly efficient, the minor element of inefficiency that releases free radicals slows down of your metabolism. To help combat this, Dr. Ames pairs alpha lipoic acid with acetyl-l-carnitine. While this combination is intended to combat the effects of aging, the benefits demonstrated in this pairing show great benefits to using alpha lipoic acid as part of your metabolism-boosting regimen. Alpha lipoic acid is available from Nature's Made, GNC, and a host of brands available at your local drugstore.

These ways to increase metabolism all lead to natural weight loss. Remember that losing weight takes time and can't be rushed. Good luck.

Caution:

• While nothing substitutes for a healthy diet and exercise, these supplements provide both short-term and long-term metabolism benefits with very little effort.
• Do remember that just because a vitamin is a "natural" product, it can still cause an interaction with other medications or supplements, and it is possible to overdose on a good thing.
• It is important to check for medication conflicts before starting any regimen.
• These supplements have proven safe and effective and are an easy way to maintain a healthy regimen for weight maintenance.

Quick Tips:

• Vitamin supplements can enhance metabolism especially when paired with exercise.

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How To Boost Your Metabolism Naturally

Your metabolism is the rate at which your body uses the calories you are eating. And we've all heard that if you're eating more calories than you're burning, this is what causes your body to store fat and gain weight. So the key is to get your body burning through those calories quickly and efficiently. You will have more energy, think more clearly and have a lean and trim body without excess fat. Follow these tips to learn how to speed up your metabolism naturally:

1. Eat every 2 or 3 hours. When you keep a constant supply of calories running through you, this signals to your body, “Food is in abundance. I don’t need to store fat.” This encourages weight loss. It also allows your body to quickly burn through all those calories that you are feeding it steadily throughout the day. You are literally giving yourself more "fuel" to run on, so end up with more vibrant energy. It's just like adding more coals into a steam engine so the train can go faster. When you put in a steady supply of calories, your body processes speed up and runs at a faster level. And by eating throughout the day, you are constantly burning calories by digesting the food. Most people don't know that digestion is one of the biggest calorie-burning functions your body performs.
2. Do some kind of activity EVERY day. Your body is designed to move. Movement and activity used to be a part of every human’s daily life until we invented cars and machines to do all the work for us. Our ancestors used to have to build shelter, climb over cliffs to search for food, and walk for long distances to find safe places to live. So in other words, the environment required the human animal to be active DAILY. Just because our modern environment has taken out the need to walk, climb and lift heavy objects in order to survive, it does not mean that your body wants to stay still. Your body CRAVES movement. That’s why you release all those endorphins - the “feel-good” hormones when you do it. This is your body’s way of rewarding you. And by having some kind of daily activity (even if it’s just walking up flights of stairs on your lunch break), your metabolism will speed up with all the activity because you're burning through calories at a much faster rate. This is why athletes eat all day long and stay so lean. They are actively burning up all those calories and not storing them as fat. But you don't have to have the same activity level as athletes - just have SOME activity every day.
   
3. Do some kind of weight-bearing exercise a few times per week. Muscle cells are very “hungry” for calories. And that means that the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn even while you are just sitting there doing nothing, and even while you are sleeping! So the key is to get more muscle cells. But the problem with our modern environment is that your muscles are never used. And if you’re not using them, your body will get rid of your muscle cells fast – especially if you are not eating enough calories to keep them alive. So this is one of the main reasons why “starvation diets” never work. When you cut down your calorie intake, the first thing your body thinks is, “Oh no - I don’t have enough calories to stay alive. I have to get rid of these calorie-expensive muscle cells fast.” And this is why the old-fashioned method of dieting slows DOWN your metabolism by getting rid of all your muscle. So the way to train your body into keeping its muscle around is to USE IT.
   Do some kind of weight-bearing exercise 2 or 3 times per week. Weightlifting is a great way to build muscle, but if you don’t like going to the gym, yoga is also a great exercise system that uses your own body’s natural weight resistance (That’s what all those arm balances, downward-facing dogs and planks are doing – you’re using your body’s own weight to build strength by building muscle.) And when you use your muscle, you are telling your body, “I can’t get rid of this muscle, in fact…I need to make MORE muscle because I’m using it every few days.” Your body will respond to this weight-bearing exercise by making more muscle cells while you sleep, and this in turn will increase your metabolism.
   
4. Practice meditation and breathing exercises. Meditation and breathing exercises calm your mind and are great ways to boost the metabolism. Now you may be wondering, “How does a calm mind affect my metabolism?” Well, science is proving more and more that the mind-body connection has a greater impact than we previously thought. The yogis have known this for thousands of years, which is why every yoga practice ends with a meditation. When your mind is stressed out and cluttered, it sends a signal to your body that you live in a “dangerous” and stressful environment. This wreaks havoc on the health of your body. Stress is a defense mechanism that has evolved over thousands of years for us humans to AVOID situations where we feel stress. It used to be that when the stress signal kicked in, we had 2 choices: fight or flight. In other words, we would stay and fight whatever was threatening us or we would run away to avoid the situation. So if the fight or flight signal is kicked on, your body deals with nothing else. This is THE most important thing because your life is in danger. And when your body and mind are focused on survival, your entire life energy gets drained and out-of-whack, including the rate at which you burn calories.
   It used to be that your body would only remain in this stressed-out situation for maybe a few hours or days ON OCCASION, but now our modern society fills us with stress EVERY day of our life. Your mind and body do not know that this traffic jam is not a group of panicked humans running away from a saber-toothed tiger…your body and mind literally think you are running for your life or why else would you be feeling so much stress? So the way to undo all this stress-causing panic that fills us each and every day is to make time for conscious relaxation by learning the ancient science of meditation and breathing exercises. By calming your mind, you return to your natural state of bliss and peace and your body can return your metabolism to its healthy function by speeding it back up.

Now you know how to boost your metabolism naturally. In addition to getting the right amount of exercise, you may also want to try eating foods that speed up your metabolism. So the next time you are considering buying any of those pills that promise to increase your energy, remember that they, too, are a modern invention trying to mask or cover up the symptom of why your metabolism is shutting down in the first place. Trying to cover up the symptom never works because it never gets to the root cause. By re-creating the same environment your body is designed to live in – with calorie-burning boosters such as an abundance of food, healthy activity and lack of stress – your metabolism will return to its natural healthy state of burning through the calories you eat and not storing fat.

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How Does Metabolism Affect Weight Loss?

Introduction to Metabolism

• Your metabolism is the rate at which your body needs to burn calories in able to keep going. Metabolism can vary from person to person and can also vary depending on the time of day and the activity being performed. Your body's metabolism is constantly going, whether you are awake or sleeping, burning a continuous amount of calories to provide energy for the many systems of your body.

Differences in Metabolism

• Metabolism is largely based on your body composition. Your body composition has to do with the percentage of muscle in your body versus the percentage of fat in your body. Muscles require a greater amount of calories than fat to stay working. This means that the greater percentage of muscle you have in your body, the higher your metabolism will be.

Metabolism and Weight Loss

• Metabolism affects how fast you are able to burn calories. For every 3,500 you burn beyond what your body needs to operate, you can lose one pound of fat. The faster your metabolism is, the faster you are able to burn those 3,500 calories. This is why those with faster metabolisms tend to be slimmer, and also tend to be able to lose weight quicker than those with slower metabolisms.

Ways to Increase your Metabolism

• The best way to increase your metabolism is to stop dramatic dieting and start working out. Though dieting is an important part of a weight loss program, cutting your calories too much can cause your body to believe it's starving. If your body feels it's starving, it will slow your metabolism down to conserve calories. The next step is increasing your muscle mass. As stated before, muscle requires a greater amount of calories to function. As you build up your muscle, your body will in turn increase its metabolism to insure that your new muscles work at their optimal level. The rest of your body benefits, because your body will target fat first to gain the calories needed to give energy to your muscles. The extra burned calories translates to lost fat, which then translates to greater, more successful weight loss.

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