Articles about Health Information

We've all heard it or even said it one time or another: "I can't lose weight because of my metabolism." It's convenient to blame our extra fat on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let's learn about the real importance of metabolism - and better yet, how you can get the most "burn" for your buck by recharging your metabolism.

In the most fundamental sense, metabolism includes all of the chemical and physical changes that occur inside the cells of the body. Most often, however, metabolism refers to the process in which the body gets and uses energy from food, so it really does play an important part in weight gain and loss.

Not everyone is given the same metabolism, and our rates actually fluctuate throughout our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism isn't necessarily making excuses. Age affects metabolism, which will slow about 5% every 10 years after we turn 40, and by sex, as males typically burn more calories at rest than females, and by the amount of muscle mass you have (more muscle generally means a higher rate of metabolism). Genetics also affects metabolism, not to mention pregnancy, as well as whether a woman chooses to breast-feed.

Despite all of the wild cards, the simple fact is that if your calorie intake surpasses your metabolism, excess energy will get housed in the body as fat. Though many of the issues affecting metabolic rate cannot be helped, fortunately, there are ways to rev up the metabolism you're born with.

The first directive is to consume the right foods in the right amounts. When you miss a meal, your body goes into starvation mode, which slows metabolism to preserve calories, because it doesn't know when it will get food again. And when the metabolism slows, so does your weight loss.

When you finally do eat after skipping a meal, instead of burning the calories in the food you have just taken in, your body converts them to body fat to keep for the next "fast." To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 - 6 smaller meals during the day and aim to eat close to the same times each day. Most importantly, never skip a meal.

You can also step up your metabolic rate with exercise, including both aerobic workouts and strength training. Aerobic activities, such as biking, dancing and running, burn more calories in the short term, while strength training will build more muscle, which improves metabolism and burns more calories in the long term - even when you're at rest, muscle uses more calories to function than fat.

In fact, each pound of muscle requires 35 calories per day, while each pound of fat requires just 2 calories per day. Despite this, you may be surprised that the more weight you posses, the faster your metabolism is likely to run. Simply put, the extra weight makes your body work more to maintain its processes.

This is partially why it is almost always easiest to lose weight when you begin dieting, and becomes more difficult as you go along because, when you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at a high rate, so that even a slight decrease in calories will bring about an immediate weight loss.

But what happens after that immediate loss, when a plateau occurs and motivation seems to go by the "weigh" side? Old compulsions and cravings can suddenly come back, and when they do, don't neglect a valuable resource - lose weight self-hypnosis. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious so that, in essence, you can get rid of food cravings. When we examine why we snack, understanding why weight loss hypnosis works so successfully becomes clear.

For many of us, snacking has become a habit - maybe you do it without thinking when you're watching TV or driving or when you are under stress. Hypnosis can actually reprogram your thoughts to break those associations, leaving you to watch TV or drive without feeling the need to eat.

One of the most successful lose weight hypnosis techniques for stopping the snacking cycle is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, which relies on collaborating with the unconscious and making it use the same thought processes that are creating your appetite, to eliminate your appetite. NLP requires many years of study and practical experience for a hypnotherapist to learn and master, but positive results can come very quickly and seem almost magical to someone who has always fought against cravings.

NLP can be equally as vital as motivation and exercise because, as you read above, it can help make sure that you eat the right kinds of foods at the right times, and this is a chief part of turbo-charging your metabolism. If you wish to keep your metabolism at full speed and make sure that all of your exercise and hard work are not going to waste by surrendering to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings once and for all.

Alan B. Densky, CH has been assisting clients with weight loss and appetite suppression since 1978. Visit his hypnosis website to view his Free hypnotherapy videos, or learn about his exclusive self-hypnosis weight loss CDs or his effective video self-hypnosis losing weight DVDs.