We want to make sure that we have plenty of energy throughout our busy days. We also want to make sure we can move and enjoy our time off from busy lifestyle. Although it is not the only thing, however, ability to improve your metabolism will help you have more energy that we are all wanting to have.
Metabolism is how well our body utilize the energy, whether it is from food source that stored as glycogen in our muscles and liver or fat that stored in our body. So to improve your metabolism means increase the energy conversion rate while at rest and while moving. There are 3 main features that we need to understand in order to improve our metabolism.
Metabolism and Physical Activity
To improve metabolism, there has to be a demand. You cannot just sit back and expect the metabolism to increase. There has to be a demand for metabolism to increase. That is why we are required to do physical activity.
Obviously, more muscle mass you have the demand for the energy will increase even at rest. Cardio workout will also improve on blood circulation throughout the body which can also improve on energy distribution throughout the body. Mobility work will allow the body to move more freely so you can move more. However, physical activity cannot be just cardio, mobility work or lifting weights, although it is a great place to start.
Yet, physical activity outside of gym, such as gardening, hiking, trail running, kayaking, participating in organized sports are critical because you get to apply your fitness level that you have created in the gym. Term fitness is physical quality that leads to potential for performance. This includes strength, mobility, VO2max or cardio, resting heart rate and so on.
By utilizing physical potential trained in the gym to actual performance will not only make you more fit but will increase the demand to create more energy which is same as increasing your metabolism throughout the day.
Metabolism and Nutrition
Unfortunately, just by moving is not enough. We need to replenish what we've used after meeting the demand of metabolism through physical activity. Remember, organs like heart and brain does require significant amount of energy to be functioning. So we cannot be using all of our energy source just to do physical activity. Therefore, we need to be replenishing what we have used through nutrition.
I personally use the term nutrition and diet differently. I use diet as manipulating nutrition, which should be your baseline eating habit, to control certain metabolic imbalances such as diabetes, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, hypertension, obesity, thyroid issues, insulin resistance and so on. Therefore, diet can be strict and usually limiting certain types of food that was included in your nutrition plan. Popular diet such as ketogenic diet limits carbohydrate intake. Carnivore diet limits vegetable intake. Vegan diet limits animal food sources. Sometimes nutrition you are following may need alteration depending on what you are wanting to accomplish.
Everybody should have their own nutrition or ways to eat. Personally, my body do well when I'm cycling through various diet. Some day I prefer vegan and some day I want more meat. Some day I want rice and fish. If I stick with one specific diet, my body will not function the way I want. Meaning my metabolism will have impact if I stick to certain diet, which will affect my workout, work, soccer performance.
Yet, with majority of diet or nutrition concepts one thing is always constant. That is consuming natural food sources rather than processed food. This is vital portion of improving your metabolism. Through physical activity, you not only used energy but also nutrients for our body to use those energy. Salt, magnesium, chromium, zinc are few of the common minerals that are deficient in our body, and they play vital role in our metabolic process. Without these minerals our metabolic reaction to create more energy for our physical activity will slow down.
One of the reasons why we suggest eating more natural food sources and less processed food is to bring in these nutrients, not only minerals, to our body so that our metabolism will be running more efficiently. Processed food usually are already depleted in these nutrients. Imagine yourself driving a diesel engine car with premium gas in it.
Metabolism and Sleep
Sleep as we know is important but not many speak of why and consequences of lacking a sleep. So here it is.
Men who sleeps four to five hours a night has level of testosterone that is equivalent to someone who is 10 year older than him.
Sleep is work like save button in computer for our memory. So it is vital to have a quality sleep after you learn something, hence the English saying "sleep on it". We also need a sleep before learning to actually prepare your brain from learning. Compared with those who sleep 8 hours and those who pull all-nighter, there is 40% deficit in ability for the brain to make new memories. I do realized that there are people who can sleep less but able to focus and work. But I wonder if you did sleep, would that person's brain performance would have been better? Disruption of deep sleep or lack of it is interrelated with aging, which is contributing to cognitive or memory decline, which we know this condition as dementia.
How about cardiovascular benefit? Every year we have something called day light saving time. In Spring when we lose one hour we see 24 percent increase in heart attack in the following day and in fall when we gain an hour we see 21 percent decrease in heart attack. We see similar data in car accidents and even suicide rate.
By sleeping 4-6 hours per night, the immune cell activity will decrease by 70% and promote tumor, inflammation, and cardiovascular diseases.
So sleeping 7+ hours are significantly important not only for metabolic functioning but for your overall cognitive, immune and cardiovascular health.
To improve your quality of sleep here are some tips:
Make a set time for sleeping and waking and stick with it.
Have a sleep routine like turning off electronics, start turning off lights, lower the room temperature and so on.
Keep your room cool (65F) and/or take hot shower before bed.
Keep your room dark and quiet.
Improving your metabolism does require work but once you can create physical activity, nutrition and sleep into your daily habit, you will see some tremendous changes in your daily performance.
Kota Shimada
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