Metabolism and Weight Loss

Metabolism and Weight Loss

How fast or slow your metabolism is can either make weight loss an effortless breeze, or something that work against you. A fast metabolism means that your body is a fat burning machine when resting, and can typically be found in people who are already slimmer or younger.

Metabolism ages and slows down as you grow older, making weight loss more difficult. Luckily there are ways of improving your metabolism, and you can even train your metabolism to be more efficient through metabolic conditioning.

Before you attempt to work out harder to making progress even faster, you need to start by knowing where your heartrate is in each of the cardio zones. There are 5 zones total that range from zone one, which is the easiest level of exertion, to level five being the hardest when your heartrate is at its highest.

In zones one through three, you are burning fat as your fuel source, which mean that zones four and five are primarily burning only carbs and sugar. If you burn carbs and sugar for your workout, you won’t lose much, if any, fat – and you could end up feeling hungry by the end of it

This results in you eating back all of the calories you just burned. To find out what zones your heartrate rest in, use an online calculator for the bronze method for a fairly accurate guess.

You can always invest in an active metabolic assessment for a couple hundred dollars to get your exact heartrate zone numbers at a gym. Now that you have your heartrate zones, spend a majority of your cardio time in zones one through three to build your aerobic base, while spending short amounts of time in the higher zones.

This will help your body switch from burning carbs and sugars quicker, to spending more time in fat burning zones during your workouts and while resting. Nutrition is another great way to work on achieving a better metabolism as well.

Simple tricks such as making sure you’re not under eating, drinking plenty of water, and eating foods with plenty of iron, fiber and protein are all beneficial for metabolism. Cardio, strengthening exercises, and nutrition go hand and hand when it comes to fitness plans.

Each will complement the other when it comes to improving your metabolism. When your body’s metabolism improves, it will improve at burning fat, and even prevent metabolic diseases.