Foods That Increase Metabolism?
You'd Be Thinking:
"Must Be Some Exotic, Expensive Stuff"

Foods that Increase Metabolism; they do Exist

We all know that exercise is one sure way to crank up our metabolism as it burns calories before they're stored as fat in our bodies.

But could there be such a thing as a food that helps to boost our metabolism?

According to nutritionists, there are such foods.

But before I go into these wondrous foods, I wanna say that keeping your blood sugar in balance will help you to burn up calories more effectively.

This is because the level of glucose in our blood is what controls our appetite. Eating too many sugar rich foods not only leads to weight gain but also fatigue, irritability and constant food cravings.

The key is to balance by having the right amount of fat, protein and carbohydrate to keep your blood sugar balanced and stabilized. This is the most important factor in weight control.

By balancing your blood sugar levels, your metabolism has a chance to burn up calories and use foods in your bodies more effectively.

You see, fruits such as apples are great to keep your blood sugar levels healthy, and bananas and dried fruit have the greatest effect on your blood sugar. Whole grains are also good.

The reality is that if you (and I) give our bodies the nutrition that they need by eating healthy nutrient dense foods, we’ve already won half the battle (against weight gain).

What happens when we eat healthy nutritious food?

Our bodies respond by increasing the metabolism, which in turn burns away extra fat.

Now this may be an over-simplified version since losing weight requires quite a bit of an effort on our part as far as exercising and eating right is concerned......but in a nut-shell, this is the first best step to loosing excess weight......

Let's understand how our body uses and stores energy. Our bodies get energy from foods we eat and the energy comes from protein, carbohydrates and fat. It’s how our bodies use these energies that affect our metabolism.

For fat, our bodies have very little trouble converting them directly into fat stores for future use. As fats get sent directly to fat storage, our body uses very little energy or calories, to accomplish this.

The same goes for simple carbohydrates (in the forms of refined sugars).

Our body not only uses very little energy to convert refined sugars into fat; if you consme huge amounts of sugar your body also releases larger amounts of insulin to deal with this sugar overload.

This higher insulin level stimulates your appetite to eat more and increases the rate at which you store excess calories as fat.

Why?

Because complex carbohydrate and protein require more energy for your body to break down and use.

This results in extra calories being burned just for the task of digestion and cellular metabolism.

These foods also help to increase your metabolism in another way.

Because complex carbohydrate takes longer to break down by the digestive system, the release of the caloric energy is spread out over a longer period of time.

This results in less insulin being released into your blood stream and a more balanced energy flow during your waking hours resulting in less snacking on sugary stuff.

Sugars and fats, on the other hand, causes energy spikes followed by a low period during which you're tempted to eat more of these fat producing foods to re-energize yourself.

Most of the complex carbohydrates come from fruits and vegetables. They can help increase your metabolism in one more way. They are high in fiber and your body burns more calories digesting fiber than just about anything else.

In fact it's said that many fruits and vegetables fall into the “negative calorie” categories of foods, meaning they actually take more calories to digest than they actually contain.

For example, let's say you eat a negative calorie food that contains 10 calories and burns 20 calories.

So, the math is - you eat 10 calories; these 10 calories burned 20 calories. Net result? You burn 10 calories just by eating this food.

What more you want, huh? This is what makes negative calorie foods so outstanding when it comes to speeding up your metabolic rate and burning fat this way.

The resulting increase in metabolism from eating negative calorie foods can help burn away excess body fat stores and result in a gradual weight loss.

When combined with a reasonable exercise program, the weight loss and metabolism increase can be even greater.

So you see, the foods that increase metabolism are also healthy, nutrient dense foods. What a bonus!

The food that's capable of providing these fantastic negative calorie burning results are:

Fruits

• Apples
• Oranges
• Star fruits
• Grapefruits
• Blueberries
• Limes
• Watermelons
• Grapes
• Pineapples
• Tangerines
• Mangoes
• Papayas

Vegetables (excellent foods that increase metabolism.......)

• Tomatoes
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Broccolis
• Cauliflowers
• Asparagus
• Lettuce
• Cucumbers
• Lady's Fingers
• Brinjals
• chilies
• Gingers

Other nutrient dense foods that increase metabolism?

Here:

• Oats and oat cakes
• Wholemeal spaghetti
• Lean chicken
• Canned tuna
• Cottage cheese
• Lentils
• Pumpernickel bread
• Chick peas
• Sunflower seeds
• Almonds
• Skimmed milk
• Chick peas
• Soya beans
• Kidney beans
• Tofu

Several studies claim that certain spices can increase your metabolic rate by raising body temperature, though to what extent and for how long is not clear.

The studies conclude that capsaicin, the substance that gives red chili pepper its powerful kick, creates the largest hike in heat generation, which helps burn more calories immediately after a meal. Black pepper and ginger too have similar effects.

On average, a meal that contains a spicy dish, like a bowl of chili, can temporarily increase metabolism by about 8% over your normal metabolic rate.

Besides a slight uptick in metabolism, spicy foods may also increase your feelings of satiety.

The bottom line? I would think spicy foods can increase metabolism, but only to a small extent.

Don't get over-excited about them.

Foods can increase your metabolism only to a certain extent.

Only exercise can significantly boost up your metabolism.

So, go for 3-4 times of cardio exercises per week, for at least 30 minutes per session, to spike up your metabolic rate, to burn off excess fat.

And eating right and healthy with nutrient dense foods will cut all the unnecessary calories and burn off fat too.....

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