4 Surefire Ways to Boost Your Metabolism

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. In each episode, I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more so you can look and feel better fast. If you'd rather watch the video, hey.

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There are four things I use as my Go tos to crank up metabolism, get healthy and and help with faster fat loss. And they may surprise you, but the results won't. If you want to keep up with things that will help you get healthy and then bonus, lose weight and keep it from coming back. I'll make sure you don't miss out. Just hit like and subscribe to this channel and you'll be good to go. So, Metabolism now you can't have a conversation about health and weight loss and getting healthy without talking about metabolism. Let's jump into my four tried and true strategies to boost your metabolic rate to help you heal and drop the pounds. Now first, let's talk about what you eat and drink. Quality matters. The quality of the food you eat directly affects everything about the way your body functions, including your metabolism. After all, you are what you eat and you are what you eat ate. Meaning if you're eating animal products and those animals were fed garbage food, guess what you're getting now? Even if you think you eat well, you may not be eating foods that can actually support your metabolism, help you get healthy, and help you lose weight. To make that happen, you need to eat thermic. The thermic effect of food means that the food takes a lot of energy to metabolize. Thermic foods help you rev up your metabolism, have more energy, think more clearly, reduce your risk of disease, and improve your digestion. They also keep you full and burn more calories. So when you eat more of these foods, it makes it easier to burn fat and lose weight, or at least not to gain it. And the good news gets better because the thermic effect is energy burned above and beyond your basal metabolic rate. Basal metabolic rate is the amount of calories your body uses. If you're at total rest, you're doing nothing. So you may not know this, but there's a hierarchy of macronutrient breakdown. When you eat, your body starts digesting first by digesting alcohols, then protein, then carbohydrates, and then finally fats. Now when you eat a mix of all the macros, protein, carbs and fat, your body might burn anywhere from 5 to 15% more energy to digest your food. Woo hoo. So this means you can't get away with grazing all day long to keep your metabolism high. Because that thermic effect of food is the same no matter how often you eat. All that matters is how much and when you eat and the balance of macronutrients you consume. So if you were doing this whole thing, I'm gonna eat all day long to keep my metabolism high. Nope, that is not what the research shows. It's actually the plate that you're eating that protein, fat and carbs that makes the difference. Okay, so if you're thinking now, huh, I could boost fat burning just by eating more foods with high thermic effect. Yep, that's the right answer. If you're eating a lot of foods that trigger thermogenesis, you're increasing your calorie burn, and that can give you the weight loss jumpstart you've been looking for. So what are some of the best thermic foods you can eat? Here goes number one, protein. This by far is definitely number one. Here's what I want you to think of when you're thinking protein. I'm really talking about clean, lean animal protein here. Wild fish, pastured pork and chicken, grass fed beef and lamb, bison, veal, these types of things. And again, the operative word here is clean. You are what you eat. 8. But we know that protein is the most thermic of all of the macro nutrients. Next, you may not think too much about what you drink, but here's what's crazy. Water can have an amazing impact on your material. There have been a lot of studies on water and weight loss and whether it boosts your metabolism. Well, it turns out the legend of cold water burning more calories versus warm waters is a myth. But one study showed that drinking 500 milliliters of water didn't matter about the temperature. Increased metabolic rate by, wait for it, 30%. Now, this was inside of about 10 minutes and maxed out about 30 to 40 minutes. But still, I will take that, won't you? Now, no matter what you weigh, drinking water raises your resting energy. And here's what's also important. If you are just mildly dehydrated, even 1%, it can raise stress hormones. So water is so key to do. And that increase in your metabolic rate just by drinking water could be an easy way to beat back weight gain. And it's also great for detoxification too. All right, number three, spices. Spices can have a great thermic effect. So let's talk about a couple of the different ones that are really important here. Let's start with ginger. Now, research shows that ginger is good for digestion and increases your metabolism. It also helps you feel full. It decreases your hunger levels and calms and soothes your digestive tract. Now, you can add ginger powder to hot water or meals or take it as supplements. Now, next up, cinnamon. Now, whatever you do with cinnamon, like, it is just absolutely delicious. It makes everything smell and taste just a little bit cozier. Why is cinnamon so important? It boosts your metabolism, improves your digestion, and most importantly, it helps control and lower blood sugar responses to meal. It's also a great alternative to salt on your roasted veggies. You wouldn't have thought of that, would you? And it's one that I love for adding some natural sweetness rather than sugar, because we don't use sugar, right? All right, then there's turmeric. Now, turmeric's been around for centuries. It's that flavor in curry dishes and has this active component called curcumin. And curcumin is a super powerful anti inflammatory. It's been linked to weight loss and to prevention of obesity and diabetes. And it could help with cognitive decline. And then finally, cayenne. Now there's something in cayenne called capsaicin. And capsaicin can help increase your ability to burn fat and calories by stimulating body heat. It literally raises your body temperature. I mean, not for long, but it still does it. It's also found in chili peppers, so they can give your metabolism a little bump, too. Now, the hotter the pepper, the bigger the metabolic zap. Capsaicin also suppresses your appetite and helps cut cravings. So add some heat. And one of the things that I love to do, especially in my chocolate loaded smoothies, add a little bit, little sprinkle of cayenne, just a little bit. Or I'll do these lemon juice drinks with a little bit of lemon juice, a little bit of stevia and a little bit of cayenne. Great for your metabolism. All right. Now the second way to boost your metabolism after food and drinks is you got to build more lean muscle. Now right out of the gate, more lean muscle will give you a better basal metabolic rate. That means that you're going to burn more calories just going about your daily business, right? It also is going to help you manage your blood sugar because muscle is one of the first places we start becoming more insulin sensitive. Of course, muscles are important for having healthy joints and great bones and controlling body fat. And remember, think of muscle like metabolic Spanx. It's going to hold everything in tighter and support a healthier metabolism along with it. Now, if you're losing weight, but you're not losing fat, I always say if you're losing weight but not losing your waist, because it's not just what you weigh, it's what your weight is made up of. So if you're losing Weight, but not fat. Odds are you're losing precious muscle, and that's making you worse, not better. That's not helping you become healthier. That's making you something called tofi. Thin outside fat inside. This is not where you want to be. You do not want to try to maintain your weight by diet alone and be a fluffy person. You want to be solid, like a rock. Building muscle can also help you lose weight faster and keep it off. Right? And makes you look better naked, by the way, too. Just had to throw that in there. Now, when you make building lean muscle part of your strategy, you can actually speed up weight loss and make sure you don't gain it back. Because your body, your muscle needs to spend more calories just to stay on your body. So muscle not only helps you burn fat, but it also, let's face it, makes it easier to stay active. And exercise can also impact the thermogenesis of your food. Wild, huh? I mean, high intensity interval training can actually increase the thermic effect of food, and so can resistance training, by the way. So you're getting this crazy one, two punch with this. Now, to be fair, it doesn't increase it much, but in fact, the effect of it can last up to five hours after your workout. So if you're working out and then you have a highly thermic food afterwards, like, say, maybe a little protein smoothie, a loaded smoothie, after you work out, not only will that protein help you repair muscle, it will also give you that extra bang for your buck and maximize fat burning. So the best exercises for this resistance training, obviously, you want to lift weights. That's the single best way to build more muscle. And high intensity interval training, which elevates growth hormone. All right? The third metabolism booster, something called neat. NEAT stands for non exercise activity thermogenesis. You've been seeing me do it right? Now, if you see me, like, fidget, move, blah, blah, blah. That's neat. It's the energy we burn for everything that's not sleeping, eating, or exercise. It's the walking, the talking, the taking the stairs, the parking farther away, the standing instead of sitting, fidgeting, yard work. It all counts. And while it may not seem like a lot, it turns out that neat can have a big impact on your metabolic rate and calorie burning. A study published in 2016 followed more than 12,000 British women for 12 years and found that fidgeting. Fidgeting may reduce the risk of death associated with excessive sedentary time. So fidget, you got to get moving. Again, like, stand up, desk, get a dog, right, Move more. And finally, fourth, you got to improve your insulin sensitivity. So insulin sensitivity is how your body hears, how your receptors hear the message of insulin. The more sensitive your body is to insulin, the less your body has to pump out. If you've got more insulin around or longer, it basically locks the doors to your fat cells so you cannot burn off stored fat for fuel. Plus, it creates inflammation, hypertension, all sorts of other problems can lead to diabetes. So you want to improve your insulin sensitivity, and when you do, you'll lose fat more easily, you'll have lower risk of disease, you'll have better brain function, fewer cravings, and less hunger. What's not to love there, right? So when you're insulin resistance, just the opposite, you are going to struggle with being able to lose fat. If you lose weight, you won't lose your waist and you end up losing muscle. That's because, again, when insulin's high, you're more likely to store calories as fat, less likely to burn them. You cannot use stored body fat for fuel easily. This is not the way that we want to be. Plus, you also get hit with cravings and hunger because again, you can't access that stored fat for fuel. Now, you're probably wondering, now that I've said this, well, how do I become more insulin sensitive? Great question. Number one biggest thing is sleep. In fact, even one poor night of sleep makes you more insulin resistant. Of course, the longer it goes, the worse it gets. So sleep is key, critical 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep a night. That's why you want to make sure that you track it. What you measure, monitor, you can improve that. You're getting that deep sleep, super important exercise, of course, building that muscle. One of the first places you can start to restore insulin sensitivity is in your muscles. That is one of the key things that muscle that exercise does for you. And number three is lowering stress. So stress really messes with your ability to regulate your blood sugar. When you're stressed out, your body thinks, oh my gosh, run from that tiger. And dumps, breaks down muscle, dumps blood sugar, dumps muscle as sugar into your bloodstream. So you will have higher fasting blood sugar if you're under stress, right? So let's look at some activities. Go back to my video that talks about how to handle stress better, and then you gotta lose a few pounds. Now, again, I always talk about how you need to get healthy to lose weight, not the opposite. And I know that's what you're trying to do in the first place. But as you do lose belly fat, which is why you always want to take your waist measurements, that's going to help you improve, improve insulin sensitivity. Okay, so super important as you're losing weight, to make sure that you're losing your waste so that you will become more insulin sensitive and lower your risk of diabetes. 5. You're going to want to eat more soluble fiber. Now, most of the things that you're going to eat, high fiber lentils and nuts and avocados, they have a blend of both insoluble and soluble. The soluble is key here because it improves insulin sensitivity while helping feed the good bacteria in your gut. So think about all the different things that you eat when you're eating by the plate of protein, healthy fats, and then fiber from plants. That's going to be helpful here. And speaking of plants, we wanna make sure that you're getting all the colorful fruits and veggies to your diet. You know, they say eat by the rainbow. Why? And I'm not talking Skittles OR M&MS. You eat by the rainbow because each of those different plants, blueberries and red peppers and red onions and avocado, all of those different colors, actually have different plant nutrients, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and they all have different incredible functions that help heal your metabolism. Obviously, I'm going to tell you to cut down on the sugar impact. Remember, all carbs except fiber turn into sugar. So we are really trying to make sure that we're making sugar slowly from the foods we eat rather than mainlining it. So we're going to take that down because one of the fastest ways to become more insulin resistant is to crank up the carbs and sugar. Because when you do that, your body is going to raise its blood sugar and raise insulin. So let's cut that way down. Now, supplements that can help here, these are called the four horsemen of blood sugar balance. These important minerals that should be in your multi that you're taking, chromium, magnesium, zinc and vanadium. Now, you're going to want to take extra magnesium. You're not going to get enough in your multivitamin for that. I take three before bed. And then, of course, optimizing your vitamin D, we check 25 hydroxy vitamin D, and you're going to want to optimize vitamin D. Take D3 with K1 and 2. That is super important for insulin modulation. So really, key critical fish oil helps restore insulin sensitivity, as does lipoic acid. And berberine is super important for blood sugar control. So all of these can make a major, major difference here as well. Now here's a couple other little fun one offs. Cinnamon. Cinnamon. Like you know who hates having to add cinnamon to things. You can throw it into your loaded smoothie, you can put it into your coffee, you can put it on oatmeal. Cinnamon's great for blood sugar control. Helps lower the blood sugar response to a meal. Same with lemon. So drinking putting a couple tablespoons of lemon juice in water before a meal can help lower the blood sugar response to meals. Same with apple cider vinegar. You can either use vinegar in salad dressings or take two tablespoons, put it into green tea before a meal. And speaking of green tea, I love green tea for helping with insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control. And it's also great for your gut microbiome and restoring the good bacteria in your gut. All right, and these are all easy ones. Who wouldn't love those ones? All right, there you go. Now I hope you got some good tips on this video for boosting your metabolism and keeping it healthy. And don't forget to like and subscribe this so that you keep the healthy lifestyle tips coming. See you next time.

For more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojay.com thanks again for being.

With me this week.

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