The benefits of increased metabolism include the ability to stay fit with lesser physical activity, lesser effort to do the activities, lesser chances of weight gain and the ability to enjoy most of your favourite foods.

Needless to say that metabolism of a person is influenced by his or her age, sex, gender, temperature, his or her built, family history, hormonal changes and more. His or hers metabolic rate may also see a decline due to the changes in his or her lifestyle.

Your metabolic rate refers to the rate the at which your body burns energy during physical activity and the rate at which it uses energy during the digestion of food. To make it easier, you can say that your metabolic rate is the rate at which the body burns up calories. Ironically, you metabolize certain amount of fat even when you sit idle.

Always be on the move to increase your metabolism:-

1. Swing your legs when you sit idly
2. Drum your fingers on your desk
3. Stand up and stretch a couple of times as you work
4. Move your head from side to side
5. Change your sitting position
6. Pace up and down the room
7. Clench and release your muscles (any muscles)
8. Tap your feet to the rhythm of music
9. Climb the stairs

But do this when people aren’t noticing!

According to experts, a few other changes in your lifestyle can affect your metabolic rate and burn calories.

• Eat breakfast
• Take more of lean protein
• Eat six small meals a day
• Include fish, dark green leafy vegetables, tomatoes, fruits and whole grains
• Drink recommended quantity of water without fail
• Do some aerobics regularly. They keep burning your fat for hours after you stop your work out.

1. Know that your gender plays a role in weight loss. The physiology of male and female are different from each other and the rate at which they can lose weight also differs. Women have a lot more fat than men and hence they are seen to lose fat in a slower rate than their lucky male counterparts. So if spouses or partners are in the same weight loss programme together they should have separate goals.
2. Never try to overdo your weight loss strategy. Respect your body and give it time to adjust. A change in the lifestyle will require some time to get adapted to and pushing things too far may crash your dreams. Overdoing exercise or over dieting will not only cause a wastage of time and energy it will also end in health problems and disappointments.
3. Get help from the right people only! You may need the help of a dietician, a physical trainer and medical practitioner. But just qualifications wouldn’t suffice. I would rather talk to my slim cousin who works out daily than to my plump doctor who has hardly seen the insides of a gym. Talk to your cousin about her eating patterns and her dualism as to how she is able to manage her family, her work and her exercise regimen. Talking to people who have succeeded in weight loss and how they are doing it matter even if you are not interested in following them.
4. Even weight loss have priorities. Eat and drink only what is needed to keep you healthy. What is more important, the meal or the dessert? Does the dessert give anything more than momentary enjoyment and calories that are difficult to burn? Keep holding to your priorities to keep the weight loss bouncers at bay.
5. Vitamin supplements are some good things available in the market. Use them when you need them. With a diet plan and a rigorous exercise routine you will need the support of multivitamins or essential fatty acids. With the help of a medical practioner choose your vitamin supplements or minerals for the weight loss period. Do not overstock them or overuse them. Even too much of nectar is poison.
6. Set only realistic goals without going overboard. You should try to lose at least one pound a week and not aim of losing three. If you cannot reach your weekly goals then your weight loss is not working well. You need not weight a month to see the results.
7. Finally, stop comparing. No two men are the same You may not lose weight like your father or brother did even while following their same routine and lifestyle. Know what can make you lose weight than hanging on to somebody else’s lifestyle.

Weight loss is simply not easy. You have to try hard and keep at it for long playing catch-up with your body until you succeed.

Pre-menopause age demands right kind of nutrition and care to avoid health risks like breast cancer, heart diseases, osteoporosis and so on. As the child bearing age passes, the production of hormone oestrogen also stops. The lack of female sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone in the bloodstream is manifested in the form of symptoms of menopause.

The female hormones also play a vital role in keeping the woman healthy by protecting her heart and by keeping her bones strong.

Heart Health

• You should not weigh more than the recommended weight of your age. So watch your calorie intake strictly.
• No to high fat.
• Check your cholesterol with fibre rich foods like oatmeal, fruits and whole grains.
• Include nutritious foods like flax seeds (omega 3, fibre, phytochemicals), and almonds (calcium, vitamin e, magnesium) in your diet.

Cancer

• Lose weight  by a strict watch on what you eat and how much.
• Eat a fibrous diet.
• Reduce alcohol consumption.
• Get an adequate supply of vitamins, folates and minerals.

Osteoporosis

• Ask your doctor about taking calcium supplements. You may need to increase the intake of calcium from 800mg/day during pre-menopause to 1000mg/day after menopause.
• Take vitamin D rich foods.
• Reduce the number of smokes.
• Exercise regularly.

Take care, ladies!

1. Let me tell you that once you start with a physical activity work hard on it and never stop it. Though you may feel tired and disinterested in the beginning once you get going you will know the difference. Physical activity need not be the same everyday. For example, if you go to the gym regularly and one day you feel tired for cardio work outs take a stroll in the park instead. It may be less satisfying for the gym person you are but it serves the same purpose- burning fat. There is no harm in mixing up exercises. Having a wide range of quality exercises will sustain your interest and earnesty in exercising and will also tone up your body. Get a lap of swim today and bike tomorrow and meet your friends again at the gym on the next day.
2. Don’t give yourself a hard time. A mistake that many of us commit while getting physical activity is pushing things far enough to make ourselves hate it. You have a goal in our mind and we jog for an hour early in the morning. At the end of the day, you feel so stressed out and tired that on the next day you don’t even feel like walking to your car. Remember that you don’t need a long work out session to burn your fat. It is better to plan your day ahead with 3 or 4 sessions of exercise at different times. A small session of gym in the morning, some nice table tennis at lunch and perhaps a stroll in the night make you stay active all day with a great metabolism.
3. Weight training is an acknowledged way of maximizing weight loss. It will boost your metabolism and enable you to burn more calories in a faster rate. Get some friends to exercise with you or even better make friends with exercising people.

In addition to all this, do not forget to drink a lot of fluids and eat protein rich meals to speed up weight loss.

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Metabolic Equivalent of Task is a thing you need to know about. One’s MET will depend upon one’s age and whether one is leading an active or sedentary lifestyle. MET is a unit used to estimate the amount of oxygen used by the body during physical activity i.e. the metabolic rate of the body.

There is no argument on calorie burning as a key to weight loss. When you work hard and exert yourself you burn more calories, consume more oxygen and see a higher MET level. The fitness levels range from 1.5 MET for the lowest exercise capacity up to 20 METs for the highest. When you are at rest your MET would be 1. Your moderate walking enables you to burn 3.5 to 7 kcal/min with a MET of 3-6. Any vigorous activity may have a higher MET of 6 and more.

So that means pushing beyond your comfort zone could make you burn calories. When you use an exercising equipment in a gym look for a MET setting. Try to reach your required MET as you work out. Challenge your body if you are physiologically fit for it. Remember to start at a lower intensity and work up from there. However, it is important to try slowly and not to overdo it. Since the MET of each person varies from another ask a fitness professional about yours.

Now that’s something to think about for the week ahead!

• Drink a lot of water and more of hot water. Sometimes you brain fools around making you feel hungry instead of thirsty. If you sip hot water it will curb your ‘hunger’ for water and make you fuller. Water also gets rid of toxins and excess calories.
• Eat smart and more of it. Low calorie foods are your saviours. Peppers, zucchini, celery and the lot are great for the start. They demand more energy for their digestion and you burn more calories without neglecting you general health. Do not forget to throw away starchy veggies like potatoes.
• Exercise in the morning as a must! Musicians practice as early as before sunrise. Meditation also works great if done at 4 AM in morning before the world wakes up. And so does physical work out. Rather than cuddling in the bed, get up and jump ahead in to the day. A few minutes of skipping, high knee lifts and the like can be highly rewarding.
• One of the easiest things you can do is to squeeze your butt as and when you can. Hold your muscles in for a few seconds and release. You can do this glute exercise even while working or doing your daily chores. Just watch your back, though!

Recent studies show that both aerobics and resistance exercise suppress hunger. Cardio exercises are known to burn calories better than the other work outs. Aerobics on a treadmill for an hour is a great appetite-curber. Many women include weight-lifting into their exercise routine to lose fat. But the new findings offer relief to those who don’t like weight lifting.

Ghrelin and peptide YY are the two hormones that regulate our appetite. Ghrelin stimulates your appetite while peptide YY inhibits appetite and hunger. Weight lifting was seen to control only ghrelin when vigorous aerobics regulated the levels of both ghrelin (dropped) and peptide YY (increased).

Aerobics also benefit you by reducing stress, increasing your energy levels, enhancing the health of your heart and lungs, reducing blood pressure and by promoting the release of endorphins in the brain. It is recommended to do aerobics for for 30-60 minutes, 3 to 5 times a week.

Experts also say that to those who are sedentary, moderate intensity exercise could also play a major role in bringing weight loss.

• Genes and cells

Genes are the deciding factor for many of us. Fat genes are the culprit behind many of our obesity or weight gain. Some of us owe our fat to the fat cells which make us fat and heavy. Certain fat cells are fed by viruses like Adenoviruses which increase the risk of obesity.

• Mental Stress

We notice a weight gain when we have a tight schedule in the work place and don’t eat or sleep at the right time. Your routine necessarily changes your eating patterns and requirements. Scientists point out that tension and stress increase our desire for carbohydrate-rich foods which serve to appease the stress hormones.

• Lack of sleep

Weight loss encouraged when you sleep for around 7-8 hours a night. Lack of sleep affects your fullness and cause hormonal imbalances.

• Mom!

The lifestyle and health conditions your mother had while you were inside her womb can be a deciding factor of your health too. Fatty and unhealthy foods she may have had before conceiving you are found to have adverse effects on the developing baby’s health. Hence it is important for moms-to-be to eat and sleep healthy before they try to conceive.

Yet, there is no need for you to be disheartened. You can be fat and at the same time be fit. Lean and hungry looking people also fall prey to lifestyle diseases despite their having the right weight. Lean or fat, physical activity for half an hour a days, five times a week is ideal for good health.

MSG, Monosodium glutamate, can be a real reason for your weight gain and obesity. Used as a food addictive and flavor enhancer, MSG is a noteworthy ingredient in many popular processed foods. MSG is a sodium salt made from wheat gluten which was once mainly associated with asthma in some its consumers. When we eat out we are sure consuming a generous amount of MSG in its different variations and brand names. Food manufacturers may intent two things by adding MSG to their product: 1) flavor enhancement and the 2) temptation to eat more.

Its link to obesity is explained thus: MSG is a substance that can overexcite the neurons to the point of cell damage to cell death (excitotoxins). MSG is capable of creating abdominal fat and causing brain damage. Experiments show that it also increased the insulin in the pancreas of the rats. When more insulin is produced, more sugar is broken and you have a low sugar levels wanting to eat more.Ironically, you eat more MSG foods again and more insulin is produced repeating the cycle. If you get diabetes, the scene is then taken over by the drug manufacturers.You don’t have to believe that your favorite restaurant uses very little MSG in their preparations. But, remember that, we, humans are many times more sensitive than rats.

Next time you dine out, make sure that your food is MSG-free. Never hesitate to ask for the ingredient list from your restaurant if you feel suspicious and never dine in there if they do no give you one.