If you’re trying to lose weight or keep it off, then a high metabolism is essential. These common lifestyle mistakes lower your metabolism, making it hard to manage your weight.
Not eating enough
While decreasing calorie intake is often a healthy way to lose weight, if taken too far it can cause your metabolism to slow down. Reducing your calorie intake to fewer than 1000 calories a day tells your body that there is a shortage of available food. To preserve its reserves, your body will slow the rate at which is metabolises foods.
Skipping strength training
Strength training increases your metabolism and increases your muscle mass. Having a higher amount of this fat-free mass increases the number of calories your body burns while resting, according to one study.
Practising strength training for just 11 minutes a day, three days a week, increased the metabolic rates of participants by an average of 7.4 per cent over six months, another study found.
Not eating enough protein
Protein makes you feel full and increases the rate at which your body burns calories, making it a key element of a healthy weight-loss diet. Eating protein temporarily increases your body’s rate of metabolism by around 20 to 30 per cent, one study shows. A high protein diet also helps to maintain a stable body weight after weight loss.
Drinking sugary drinks
Corn syrup contains 55 per cent fructose. Excessive fructose consumption can increase fat storage around your belly and liver. It can also cause a reduction in metabolic rate.
The consumption of sugary drinks is also linked to diabetes, obesity and insulin resistance.
Getting poor quality sleep
Not only is poor quality sleep linked to Alzheimer’s and heart attacks, but sleeping too few hours may increase your risk of diabetes, depression and heart disease, and increase your chance of weight gain. Sleeping fewer than four hours a night for five consecutive nights can cause a 2.6 per cent decrease in resting metabolic rates on average, according to one study.
Another study showed that disrupting the circadian rhythm, combined with prolonged sleep restrictions, caused participants’ metabolic rate to decrease by an average of eight per cent.
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Disclaimer: This article contains general information about health issues and is not advice. For health advice, consult your medical practitioner.
