Let’s burn! Metabolic tweaks and hacks

Our metabolism is, for as long as we live, a constantly moving thing. And it’s not a monolith either; there are parts of our metabolism that can speed up or slow down independently of others.

If we talk about metabolism without clarifying context, though, this is usually about one’s “basal metabolic rate”, that is, how many calories we burn just by being alive.

Why do we want to speed it up? Might we ever want to slow it down?

We might want to slow our metabolism down in survival circumstances, but generally speaking, a faster metabolism is a better one.

Yes, even when it comes to aging. Because although metabolism comes with metabolizing oxygen (which, ironically, tends to kill us eventually, since this is a key part of cellular aging), it is still beneficial to replace cells sooner rather than later. The later we replace a given cell (ie, the longer the cell lives), the more damaged it gets, and then the copy is damaged from the start, because the damage was copied along with it. So, best to have a fast metabolism to replace cells quickly when they are young and healthy.

A quick metabolism helps the body to do this.

Most people, of course, are interested in a fast metabolism to burn off fat, but beware: if you increase your metabolism without consideration to how and when you consume calories, you will simply end up eating more to compensate.

One final quick note before we begin:

Limitations

There’s a lot we can do to change our metabolism, but there are some things that may be outside of our control. They include:

• Age—we can influence our biological age, but we cannot (yet!) halt aging, so this will happen
• Body size—and yes we can change this a bit, but we all have our own “basic frame” to work with. Someone who is 6’6” is never going to be able to have the same lower-end-of-scale body mass of someone who is 5’0”, say.
• Sex—this is about hormones, and HRT is a thing, but for example, broadly speaking, men will have faster metabolisms than women, because of hormonal differences.
• Medical conditions—often also related to other hormones, but for example someone with Type 1 Diabetes is going to have a very different relationship with their metabolism than someone without, and someone with a hypo- or hyperactive thyroid will again have a very different metabolism in a way that that lifestyle factors can’t completely compensate for.

The tips and tricks

Intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting has been found to, amongst other things, promote healthy apoptosis and autophagy (in other words: early programmed cell death and recycling—these are good things).

It also has anti-inflammatory benefits and decreases the risk of insulin resistance. In other words, intermittent fasting boosts the metabolism while simultaneously guarding against some of the dangers of a faster metabolism (harms you’d get if you instead increased your metabolism by doing intense exercise and then eating a mountain of convenience food to compensate)

Read the science: Intermittent Fasting: Is the Wait Worth the Weight?

Read our prior article: Fasting Without Crashing? We Sort The Science From The Hype

Enjoy plenty of protein

This one won’t speed your metabolism up, so much as help it avoid slowing down as a result of fat loss.

Because of our body’s marvelous homeostatic system trying to keep our body from changing status at any given time, often when we lose fat, our body drops our metabolism to compensate, thinking we are in an ongoing survival situation and food is scarce so we’d better conserve energy (as fat). That’s a pain for would-be weight-loss dieters!

Eating protein can let our body know that we’re perfectly safe and not starving, so it will keep the metabolism ticking over nicely, without putting on fat.

Read the science: The role of protein in weight loss and maintenance

Stay hydrated

People think of drinking water as part of a weight loss program being just about filling oneself up, and that is a thing, but it also has a role to play in our metabolism. Specifically, lipolysis (the process of removing fat).

Because, we are mostly water. Not only is it the main content of our various body tissue cells, but also, of particular note, our blood (the means by which everything is transported around our body) is mostly water, too.

It’s hard for the body to keep everything ticking over like a well-oiled machine if its means of transportation is sluggish!

Check it out: Increased Hydration Can Be Associated with Weight Loss

Take a stand

That basal metabolic rate we talked about?

• If you’re lying down at rest, that’s what your metabolism will be like.
• If you’re sitting up, it’ll be a little quicker, but not much.
• If you’re standing, suddenly half your body is doing things, and you don’t even notice them because they’re just stabilizing muscles and the like, but on a cellular level, your body gets very busy.

Read all about it: Cardiometabolic impact of changing sitting, standing, and stepping in the workplace

Time to invest in a standing desk? Or a treadmill in front of the TV?

The spice of life

Capsaicin, the compound in many kinds of pepper that give them their spicy flavor, boosts the metabolism. In the words of Tremblay et al for the International Journal of Obesity:

❝[Capsaicin] stimulates the sympathoadrenal system that mediates the thermogenic and anorexigenic effects of capsaicinoids.

Capsaicinoids have been found to accentuate the impact of caloric restriction on body weight loss.

Some studies have also shown that capsinoids increase energy expenditure.

Capsaicin supplementation attenuates or even prevents the increase in hunger and decrease in fullness as well as the decrease in energy expenditure and fat oxidation, which normally result from energy restriction❞

Read for yourself: Capsaicinoids: a spicy solution to the management of obesity?

You snooze, you lose (fat)

While exercising is generally touted as the road to weight loss, and certainly regular exercise does have a part to play, doing so without good rest will have bad results.

In fact, even if you’re not exercising, if you don’t get enough sleep your metabolism will get sluggish to try to slow you down and encourage you to sleep.

So, be proactive, and make getting enough good quality sleep a priority.

See: Effects of sleep restriction on metabolism-related parameters in healthy adults: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Eat for metabolic health

Aside from the chilli peppers we mentioned, there are other foods associated with good metabolic health. We don’t have room to go into the science of each of them here, but here’s a well-researched, well-sourced standalone article listing some top choices:

The 12 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism

Enjoy!

In our recent Expert Insights main features, we’ve looked at two fairly opposing schools of thought when it comes to managing what we eat.

First we looked at:

What Flexible Dieting Really Means

…and the notion of doing things imperfectly for greater sustainability, and reducing the cognitive load of dieting by measuring only the things that are necessary.

And then in opposition to that,

What Are The “Bright Lines” Of Bright Line Eating?

…and the notion of doing things perfectly so as to not go astray, and reducing the cognitive load of dieting by having hard-and-fast rules that one does not second-guess or reconsider later when hungry.

Today we’re going to look at Intuitive Eating, and what it does and doesn’t mean.

Intuitive Eating does mean paying attention to hunger signals (each way)

Intuitive Eating means listening to one’s body, and responding to hunger signals, whether those signals are saying “time to eat” or “time to stop”.

A common recommendation is to “check in” with one’s body several times per meal, reflecting on such questions as:

• Do I have hunger pangs? Would I seek food now if I weren’t already at the table?
• If I hadn’t made more food than I’ve already eaten so far, would that have been enough, or would I have to look for something else to eat?
• Am I craving any of the foods that are still before me? Which one(s)?
• How much “room” do I feel I still have, really? Am I still in the comfort zone, and/or am I about to pass into having overeaten?
• Am I eating for pleasure only at this point? (This is not inherently bad, by the way—it’s ok to have a little more just for pleasure! But it is good to note that this is the reason we’re eating, and take it as a cue to slow down and remember to eat mindfully, and enjoy every bite)
• Have I, in fact, passed the point of pleasure, and I’m just eating because it’s in front of me, or so as to “not be wasteful”?

See also: Interoception: Improving Our Awareness Of Body Cues

And for that matter: Mindful Eating: How To Get More Out Of What’s On Your Plate

Intuitive Eating is not “80:20”

When it comes to food, the 80:20 rule is the idea of having 80% of one’s diet healthy, and the other 20% “free”, not necessarily unhealthy, but certainly not moderated either.

Do you know what else the 80:20 food rule is?

A food rule.

Intuitive Eating doesn’t do those.

The problem with food rules is that they can get us into the sorts of problems described in the studies showing how flexible dieting generally works better than rigid dieting.

Suddenly, what should have been our free-eating 20% becomes “wait, is this still 20%, or have I now eaten so much compared to the healthy food, that I’m at 110% for my overall food consumption today?”

Then one gets into “Well, I’ve already failed to do 80:20 today, so I’ll try again tomorrow [and binge meanwhile, since today is already written off]”

See also: Eating Disorders: More Varied (And Prevalent) Than People Think

It’s not “eat anything, anytime”, either

Intuitive Eating is about listening to your body, and your brain is also part of your body.

• If your body is saying “give me sugar”, your brain might add the information “fruit is healthier than candy”.
• If your body is saying “give me fat”, your brain might add the information “nuts are healthier than fried food”
• If your body is saying “give me salt”, your brain might add the information “kimchi is healthier than potato chips”

That doesn’t mean you have to swear off candy, fried food, or potato chips.

But it does mean that you might try satisfying your craving with the healthier option first, giving yourself permission to have the less healthy option afterwards if you still want it (you probably won’t).

See also:

I want to eat healthily. So why do I crave sugar, salt and carbs?

Want to know more about Intuitive Eating?

You might like this book that we reviewed previously:

Intuitive Eating – by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

Enjoy!