Metabolism Plays a Critical Role in Long Term Weight Loss

Dietary protein provides numerous benefits to your health, body composition and overall performance. Moreover, consuming protein is by far the best choice to stay feeling full longer after eating. Not only do high-protein foods speed recovery, reduce muscle loss and build additional muscle mass, protein plays an important role in curbing hunger and helping you maintain a healthy weight. A healthy intake of protein plays a crucial role in supporting many bodily functions, such as blood clotting, immune system response, vision, balance and the production of various hormones. Since it contains calories, it is also a secondary source of fuel for energy. Studies suggest that consuming lower-calorie, high protein foods at mealtimes or for between-meal snacks produces greater reductions in hunger and even helps to maintain muscle mass regardless of your exercise regimen.

Tips on Boosting Your Metabolism

Boosting metabolism is important for anyone who is trying to lose weight. Although men tend to burn more calories than women, especially at rest, metabolism slows steadily in most adults after age 40. Here's some tips to rev up your metabolic rate, such as:

• Trigger Your Metabolism - When you consume leafy green vegetables, your body has to work harder digesting the food, which can trigger your metabolism to speed up. Not eating enough whole vegetables is a dietary mistake.
• Eat Moderate Amounts - Eating too little and losing weight too fast correlate strongly with future weight gain and not long-term weight control. Nonetheless, don't be in too big of a hurry as your body can slow your metabolism as a natural response.
• Metabolism Decreases with Weight Loss - Excessive caloric restrictions can lead to a drastic slowing of the metabolism (often called a weight loss plateau), which requires an immediate adjustment to prevent a metabolic stall.
• Don't Get Caught Up In Blame - Metabolism likely gets too much attention, unnecessary credit and unreasonable amounts of blame due to a lack of understanding about dietary changes and your body's fine tuning of your metabolism.
• Avoid Starvation Mode - For some people, too much focus on cardio can mean a higher burn, which eliminates too much muscle for the fat loss. By adding a little strength training, the new muscle mass means a boost to your metabolism.

Keep in mind that processed foods labeled as health foods are not really healthy. The best option is to stick with whole, single-ingredient foods whenever possible.

Obese People Are Often Fast Eaters

Chewing your food thoroughly causes you to eat more slowly, which is associated with decreased food consumption, increased fullness and overall smaller food portion sizes. Obese people are often fast eaters who spend little time chewing. Since most people overestimate the amount of exercise they are getting and underestimate how much they are eating, awareness is incredibly important anytime you are trying to lose weight and keep it off. Keep in mind that a majority of people tend to underestimate their daily intake of calories by a significant amount, so many people struggling to shed pounds are still consuming too many calories. Since food quality can be just as important as food quantity, you can improve your health and well-being by replacing highly processed food options with whole, single-ingredient foods.

Here at Metabolic Research Center, our doctors and dietitians started warning dieters more than thirty years ago about the dangers of following highly-restricted diets and how it could cause their body to reset their metabolism to a lower, slower burn rate. If your goal is to lose weight and keep it off, visit the MRC location nearest you or use this website's Contact Us form to submit your questions for a prompt response.