Video: How to Increase Your Metabolism Naturally

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There are a number of things a person can do to increase metabolism naturally, including physical activity with exercises that alternate between cardiovascular and strength training. Learn about foods with thermogenic properties, such as green tea, with help from a registered and licensed dietitian in this free video on exercise and metabolism.

Video Transcript

My name is Christine Marquette and I am a registered and licensed dietitian with Nutrition and Fitness and I have been asked how to increase your metabolism naturally. There is a couple of different things that you can do to increase your metabolism. One of the biggest factors in metabolism is physical activity. The more physically active we are the higher our metabolism so thats one of the easiest natural ways to increase your metabolism is to make sure you do some type of exercise on a daily basis. Ideally you would be alternating your exercise. Some days you would be doing aerobic or cardiovascular type exercise and by that I mean something that gets your heart beating a bit faster and gets you a little bit short of breath and you would have some strength training on other days. The reason why you need strength training is that actually builds muscle and it reduces your body fat a bit more quickly than only doing cardiovascular or aerobic type exercise. Traditionally it has been shown that increased muscle can boost your metabolism so the more muscle you have the higher your metabolism so again you want to incorporate strength training to build your muscles and reduce your body fat. That's another way to boost your metabolism. As far as some eating tips there are some foods that are said to have thermogenic properties. That means they actually increase your metabolism slightly in the sense that when you eat those foods you actually can feel the heat, you feel hotter and your body gets warmed up. When your body is producing more heat that actually shows that your metabolism is getting a little bit faster so a few foods that are known to have thermogenic properites, Lentils are one, hot peppers are another, green tea is another. Now keep in mind that this is a minor effect. It is not going to be a huge increase in your metabolism. You are not going to see the weight just dropping off by including these foods but they do have a modest benefit. They do have a modest increase in your metabolism so if you combine the exercise in a variety where you are doing some cardiovascular, some strength training and you are including some of these thermogenic foods such as Lentils or hot peppers or green tea, all of that together can naturally boost your metabolism and if you do include all those aspects that increase in your metabolism can be fairly significant. So a few things to keep in mind for naturally increasing your metabolism.

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How to Increase Your Metabolism Naturally

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