Vitality News Health Articles

We’ve all heard it or even said it one time or another: “I can’t lose weight because of my metabolism.” It is convenient to blame our unwanted weight on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let’s examine the real importance of metabolism - and better yet, how you can get the most “burn” for your buck by recharging your metabolism.

In the most basic sense, metabolism includes all of the physical and chemical changes that take place inside the body’s cells. Most often, though, metabolism refers to the process in which the body acquires and uses energy from what we eat, so it really does play an important function in weight gain and loss.

Not everyone is born with the same metabolism, and our rates actually fluctuate during our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism isn’t necessarily making excuses. Age affects metabolism, which will slow about 5% every 10 years after we turn 40, and by gender, as males usually burn more calories at rest than females, and by the quantity of muscle mass you possess (more muscle generally means a higher metabolic rate). Genetics also impacts metabolism, not to mention having children, as well as whether a woman chooses to breast-feed.

Regardless of all of the wild cards, the simple fact is that when your calorie intake exceeds your metabolism, surplus energy will get stored in the body as fat. Though some of the aspects affecting metabolic rate can’t be helped, fortunately, there are methods to rev up the metabolism you are born with.

The first guideline is to take in the correct foods in the correct amounts. When you miss a meal, your body turns on starvation mode, which slows metabolism to preserve calories, because it doesn’t know when it will be fed again. And when the metabolism slows down, so does the rate at which you lose weight.

When you finally do eat after having skipped a meal, instead of using the calories in the food you’ve just eaten, your body transfers them to body fat to store for the next “fast.” To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 - 6 smaller meals during the day and try to eat close to the same times each day. Most importantly, never skip a meal.

You can also step up your metabolic rate with exercise, including both aerobic routines and weight lifting. Aerobic activities, such as running, biking and dancing, use more calories in the short term, while weight lifting will build more muscle, which improves metabolism and burns more calories in the long term - even when you are sitting still, muscle requires more calories to function than fat.

In fact, each pound of muscle burns 35 calories per day, while each pound of fat burns just 2 calories per day. Despite this, you may be surprised that the more weight you have, the faster your metabolism is likely to run. Simply put, the extra weight makes your body work more to maintain its processes.

This is partly why it is nearly always easiest to lose weight when you start dieting, and becomes more difficult as you go along because, when you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at an elevated rate, so that even a slight reduction in calories will lead to an immediate weight loss.

But what happens after that immediate loss, when a plateau occurs and motivation seems to go by the “weigh” side? Persistent cravings and compulsions can swiftly return, and when they do, do not overlook a valuable resource - lose weight hypnosis. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious mind so that, in essence, you can do away with food cravings. When we study why we snack, identifying why weight loss hypnosis works so successfully becomes evident.

For a lot of us, snacking has become a habit - maybe you do it automatically when you are watching TV or driving or when you’re under stress. Hypnosis can actually reprogram your thoughts to cut those associations, leaving you to drive or watch TV without experiencing the need to eat.

One of the most successful lose weight hypnosis methods for breaking the snacking cycle is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, which relies on negotiating with the unconscious mind and making it use the same thought processes that are creating your appetite, to eliminate your appetite. NLP entails many years of study and practical experience for a hypnotherapist to learn and master, but positive results can come very quickly and seem almost magical to a person who has always fought against cravings.

NLP can be just as vital as exercise and motivation because, as you learned above, it can help ensure that you eat the correct kinds of foods at the right times, and this is a chief part of turbo-charging your metabolism. If you want to keep your metabolism at full speed and ensure that all of hard work and exercise are not going to waste by yielding to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings once and for all.

Alan B. Densky, CH has been assisting clients with weight loss and appetite suppression since 1978. Visit his self-hypnosis website to enjoy his Free hypnosis videos, or learn about his effective hypnotherapy weight loss CDs or his powerful video hypnotherapy losing weight DVDs.

- Alan B. Densky, CH