Ways of Treating Low Metabolism

Do you often wonder why children and teens can eat huge amounts of food and not gain weight? The answer has to do with metabolism, a process that can be described as how much the body burns calories every day. Children and teenagers have faster metabolism, which means their body is able to burn calories faster instead of having those calories stored in the body as fat. As we age, our metabolism slows down, which explains why, even if we eat the same amount of food as we always do, we end up gaining weight anyway. Weight gain as a result of low metabolism can be countered, though. And this usually involves making lifestyle changes and developing healthy habits.

What Causes Low Metabolism?

Low metabolism can be a combination of genetics, lifestyle and eating habits. People who live a sedentary life, get into crash diets and prolonged fasting, eat sugary foods and have hypothyroidism (under active thyroid glands) tend to have low metabolism. Fasting and crash diets promote weight loss, but only temporarily. What they do to the metabolism is slow it down since the body experiences low calorie intake, prompting the body to store the fat and burn it at a slower rate.

How to Increase Metabolism

You can increase metabolism in a number of ways. While metabolism can be increased through treatments and administering medications, the more effective ways are natural forms. If you have low metabolism, the first thing you should do is shun diets that require you to skip meals. You may lose a few pounds if you skip breakfast, lunch or supper but the weight loss is only short term. When you resume normal eating, you will quickly discover that the pounds come back, but this time they're twice as much as you have lost!

Another way to naturally treat low metabolism is to exercise regularly. If you can afford it, sign up for a gym membership and engage in muscle building and strength training as doing so will help further increase your metabolism.

Keep yourself hydrated by drinking water throughout the day, at least eight glasses of it. Avoid caffeinated, carbonated and sugary drinks. If you drink, try to cut back on your alcohol consumption. Limit yourself to an occasional glass of wine. Any attempts to raise your metabolic rate and lose weight would be futile if you can't cut back on drinking beer.

Foods such as green and red peppers (chili, cayenne, serano, habanera), protein rich foods, beets, mustard, cucumbers, celery, garlic and green tea are effective helping people with low metabolism. It is recommended that you snack on a celery stick or any of the foods mentioned in between meals to keep your metabolism occupied.

Don't skip breakfast. As much as possible, eat a healthy breakfast each morning. While you sleep, your body's metabolic rate has slowed down so for breakfast, you need to eat foods that are longer to digest so you will have more energy throughout the day. Instead of donuts, eat oats for breakfast. Ideally, you should consume about 400 calories for breakfast.