10 Science-Backed Ways to Boost Your Metabolism

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Don’t let a sluggish metabolism slow you down or hinder your results. A few simple tweaks can help you burn more calories, balance your hormones, and maximize your efforts.

Read below for my favorite science-proven metabolism boosting, body toning tips.

Move In The Morning

Whether you like to get your workout over with at 6 a.m. workout or de-stress 6 p.m. visit to the gym, exercising regularly at any point of the day helps keep you healthy and fit. Everyone has their own theories and preferences regarding the “best” time of the day to train, but does it really make a difference whether you work out in the morning or the evening?

A 2010 study published in the Journal of Physiology found exercising before breakfast helps dieters achieve better weight loss results because the body burns a greater percentage of fat for energy during exercise rather than depending on carbs from food. This study was the first to show that fasted training is more beneficial than fed training to energize the body and improve glucose tolerance in a fat-rich diet. Morning workouts prime the body for an all-day fat burn.

Eat More Calories

Studies confirm exercise alone won’t help you lose weight.

This loss of muscle mass slows down your metabolism. That’s because the more muscle you have, the more fat you burn at rest (i.e., binge watching your new favorite show). To make matters worse, research has found that restricting your food can make you irritable and uncomfortable, aka hangry. This stress can cause a rise in cortisol, which increases the storage of visceral fat cells in areas like your stomach. This response is the complete opposite of what we try to achieve from dieting!

Try High-Intensity Metabolic Training

The science is clear about how cardio increases cortisol levels.

Metabolic training helps stabilize insulin levels, thus decreasing insulin resistance. The main reason metabolic exercise is the best for hormonal balance is it’s unique ability to maintain lower cortisol levels and increased growth hormone levels.

High-intensity interval training was found to maximize cardiac benefits of exercise, meaning when you perform metabolic type exercise you boost your cardiovascular health.

One study ran for two weeks of high-intensity aerobic interval training and it was discovered that metabolic workouts increases the capacity for fat oxidation during exercise in women. Great news for busy women, since you don’t need to exercise for an hour a day. 20-25 minutes of YOUR high-intentisy 3 or 4 times per week and you can see results like Juanita.

Eat More Protein

Protein is the single most important nutrient for weight loss and a better looking body.

A high protein intake boosts metabolism, reduces appetite and changes several weight-regulating hormones (study). Protein can help you lose weight and belly fat, and it works via several different mechanisms. Protein reduces levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin, while it boosts the appetite-reducing hormones GLP-1, peptide YY and cholecystokinin. This leads to an automatic reduction in calorie intake.

A high protein intake can make you burn 80-100 more calories per day, with one study showing an increase of 260 calories during overfeeding.

In order to lose weight, aiming for 25-35% of calories as protein may be optimal. 30% of calories amounts to 150 grams of protein on a 2000 calorie diet.

The 3-Week Metabolism Diet will help you consume high-quality protein in the right amounts for maximum metabolic benefit.

Spice Up Your Meals

Certain herbs and spices can help you maintain a healthy body weight by increasing your metabolism, shrinking fat tissue and suppressing your appetite

Ginseng, cayenne pepper, black pepper, cinnamon, turmeric and ginger may all support your weight loss goals when added generously to your meals

Cayenne Pepper – Capsaicin, the compound that gives peppers their heat, may help fight obesity by decreasing calorie intake, shrinking fat tissue, and lowering blood fat levels, as well as fight fat buildup by triggering beneficial protein changes in your body.

Cinnamon – This spice may help to boost your metabolism, and it also has impressive benefits for blood sugar regulation, making it an ideal seasoning for people with diabetes or pre-diabetes. Cinnamon has been found to significantly reduce blood sugar levels, triglycerides, LDL (bad) cholesterol, and total cholesterol levels in people with type 2 diabetes, as well as increase glucose metabolism by about 20 times, which would significantly improve your ability to regulate blood sugar.

Turmeric – Curcumin may also be useful for the treatment and prevention of obesity-related chronic diseases, as the interactions of curcumin with several key signal transduction pathways in the body result in improvements in insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and other inflammatory symptoms associated with obesity and metabolic disorders.

Ginger – Ginger is another warming spice that has anti-inflammatory properties and is known to help soothe and relax your intestinal tract. Research also suggests that ginger may have thermogenic properties that help boost your metabolism, as well as have an appetite-suppressant effect when consumed, suggesting a “potential role of ginger in weight management.

Don’t be afraid to add plenty of sea salt, pepper, paprika, and the other spices liseted above so you can eat delicious fat-burning meals. Get over 60 delicious recipes inside my 8-Week Metabolism Makeover program.

Get Your Muscles Fired Up With After-Burn

In simplest terms, the “afterburn effect” is essentially the calories you continue to burn after exercising. While many people primarily pay attention to the amount of calories they burn while running, cycling, swimming or lifting weights, there’s a whole other important component to calorie-burning that you might be overlooking.

That’s because our bodies actually use up extra energy (calories) after certain workouts to help us recover, cool down and deal with the hormonal changes that the exercise produced. The scientific name for this process is excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.

HIMT (High-Intensity Metabolic Training) workouts increase your metabolism — in other words, they raise your total energy expenditure, which is the amount of calories your body burns for energy daily. The more often you do intense workouts, the more it pays off — the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism reports that EPOC varies as a function of metabolic stress and more training improves the efficiency of metabolic regulation during recovery from exercise.

Balance Your Macros

“A calorie is a calorie” is an oft-repeated dietary slogan, and not overeating is indeed an important health measure. Rather than focusing on calories alone, however, emerging research shows that quality is also key in determining what we should eat and what we should avoid in order to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Rather than choosing foods based only on caloric value, think instead about choosing high-quality, healthy foods, and minimizing low-quality foods.

Researchers in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health show us that quality is in fact very important in determining what we should eat to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, and that the notion of “a calorie is a calorie” does not tell the whole story.

Studies have proven your carb to protein ratios improve lifespan.

Macro-balancing is used to balance hormones, stabilize insulin levels, and maintaining an elevated metabolic rate to burn 3x the daily calories.

Learn more about macro-balancing with a metabolism-focused approach to fat loss.

Get Your Stress Under Control

Stress is making you fat AND preventing you from achieving a healthy fat-burning metabolism.

Animal and human studies have demonstrated that cortisol injections are associated with increased appetite, cravings for sugar, and weight gain. This can stimulate an individual to eat food that is high in fat and/or sugar.

Cortisol also indirectly influences appetite by regulating other chemicals that are released during stress such as CRH (corticotrophin releasing hormone), leptin, and neuropeptide Y (NPY). High levels of NPY and CRH and reduced levels of leptin have been shown to stimulate appetite, causing you eat more of the wrong kinds of foods.

Sleep More

Getting enough sleep slows aging, gives you energy to conquer your day, and does more than just keep you from “being tired”. Adequate sleep is just as important as eating healthy and exercising when it comes to keeping your metabolic rate sky-hihg. According to a 2011 study , when we disrupt out circadian rhythms, our bodies experience a disruption in metabolism-regulating hormones and inhibit cellular growth.

Try getting to sleep 30 minutes earlier by avoiding light, taking a relaxing bath, and avoiding any caffeine or alcohol in the afternoon/evening.

A Healthy Metabolism Leads To Healthy Fat Loss

When your metabolism is healthy–when you’re able to eat plenty of food every day without gaining weight–weight loss is very easy.

Weight loss is even easier when you focus your efforts on health instead of weight loss. On fat loss instead of scale weight. On metabolism, instead of calories.

This is exactly what I teach my students inside The 3-Week Metabolism Diet, where women are getting healthy to lose weight instead of the other way around.

Use science to your advantage and turn your metabolism into a fat-burning machine with my 3-phase approach to healthy fat loss:

1.) Macro-Balancing

2.) Carb-Cycling

3.) Metabolic Reconditioning

Learn exactly what I mean and learn the 8 metabolism killers keeping you overweight on the next page: