Channelise your metabolism

In fitness world, we often use metabolism to describe the rate at which our body burns calories. One way to think about metabolism is to view your body as a car and metabolism as its engine. Our metabolism burns fuel to produce energy for everything we do. It’s the calories found in the food we eat and beverages we drink. 

Each engine is unique to the car just like your metabolism is to your body. Some cars have a faster engine while some are slow. That’s one of the reasons why some people can eat more than others without packing a pound on.

Fuel the right quantity: Eating too many calories can make you gain fat. But eating too few calories can slow down your metabolism as well. This is almost similar to the battery saver option you have in your phone. Your body also undergoes similar adaptations when you intake too few calories. Thus, eating right calories through quantified nutrition is the key for an effective fat loss while keeping the metabolism up.

Avoid rash driving: Fad diets affect our body and they slow down our metabolism. Yes, you can lose those 5-6 Kg right now with same insane, fad diets, but if you do, you’ll just gain that weight back, and your metabolism will be worse for it, and things will be even harder for you next time. If you really want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to forget about short-term cosmetic goals for long-term metabolic health and sustainable fat loss.

Use the right fuel: Try to include protein in your every meal. After water our body is mostly composed of proteins. Indeed, proteins are the main component of cells and are essential to life. Proteins are often called “the building blocks of life”. The biggest advantage of having more protein in the diet is that protein has the highest thermic effect of food (TEF) amongst all nutrients. The longer it takes to digest something or the harder it is to digest something, the more fuel your engine will use to completely digest it. 

Upgrade your engine: Adding more muscles improve your strength and body composition improving the metabolism and fuel partitioning of your system. Do weight training to add muscles to your frame and upgrade your engine to burn more fuel. Also, weight training can help you to combat the drop-in metabolism that can occur during the fat loss. 

Pedal it light: Stress and sleep regulates the eating behaviour and also controls the hormonal and metabolic processes that can affect the fat loss.  Stress and lack of sleep depletes your will power and can cause sugar cravings. So, if you really want a metabolic leg up, make sure to reduce stress in your life through proactive stress management and aim for 6-8 hours of sleep every night. 

Aditya Mahajan, Nutrition Consultant at SQUATS.