Boost Your Metabolism With These Superfoods

Ever been told that your metabolism is too slow, or maybe too fast? At one time your metabolism, which affects how quickly your body burns energy, was believed to be mostly genetic.

Now we know that there are in fact many ways to boost your metabolism.

People who do a lot of exercise or who are very muscular tend to have a higher base metabolic rate than sedentary people.

They type of food you eat also changes your metabolism, and adding these foods to your diet can make small adjustments that eventually add up to a faster metabolism and an easier time losing weight.

Coffee

The high caffeine content of coffee is what gives it amazing metabolism boosting properties. Caffeine stimulates the nervous system and increases levels of adrenaline, which is what makes you feel awake and alert when you drink it. Just having more energy is enough to make you more around more and burn more calories.

However, caffeine also stimulates and increase in lipase, an enzyme that breaks down fat into fatty acids and glycerin. Caffeine prompts your body to break down more of the fat storeid in cells so that the fatty acids can be burned as fuel. Coffee also contains chlorogenic acid, a substance which may slow your body's absorption of carbohydrates.

Your coffee won't have as much of an effect if it's full of fat and sugar, so avoid lattes flavored with syrup. Making coffee at home either black or with a little low fat milk is best for you.

Green tea

Green tea also contains a small amount of caffeine, but the reason it boosts your metabolism so well is down to another compound called epigallocatechin gallate – which is so completely unpronounceable that it's usually known as ECGC.

ECGC boosts norepinephrine production in the body, which prompts the cells to break down fat into fatty acids and metabolize it. In one study green tea increased fat oxidation by 17% and improved physical performance by 10%. Green tea also improves insulin sensitivity, which reduces blood sugar levels and is great for diabetics.

You need six or seven cups of tea per day, without sugar, to see a difference. If you don't enjoy green tea or struggle to drink enough, pills containing green tea extract are available instead. Matcha green tea has a stronger concentration of antioxidants because the tea leaves are ground into powder instead of steeped, so you may not need to drink as much to see the same benefits.

Spicy food

Hot spices like black pepper and ginger raise the body temperature when you eat them, and lead to a boost in your metabolic rate. The best spice is capsaicin, a compound which gives chillies and sauces like tabasco their hot flavor.

A curry or a spicy Mexican dish pushes your metabolism up by around 8%, and the effect lasts for several hours. That might only help you burn a couple of hundred calories, but over time the results add up. Capsaicin also has a role in suppressing appetite. A clinical trial from 2014 found participants reported feeling fuller and were less likely to overeat when their diet was supplemented with capsaicin.

It's not necessarily good for you to eat spicy food at every meal, since it can give you heartburn or ulcers if you're susceptible to those things, but it does seem that a few spicy meals every week will help give your metabolism and fat burning a helping hand.

Citrus fruits

Citrus fruits are high in fiber and low in calories, so you feel full, keep your blood sugar down and burn fat. They're also high in essential nutrients like vitamin C and vitamin B6.

Their ability to boost your metabolism seems to be caused by the relatively high levels of phytonutrients they contain. Recent research found that the combination of phytonutrients p-synephrine, naringin, and hesperidin burned more calories in subjects, even when they weren't engaged in physical activity. Phytonutrients may also enhance the body's natural immunity, repair DNA and protect us from carcinogens – that is one hard-working chemical!

Grapefruit is one of the best citrus fruits to eat because it also lowers insulin levels, so that you use your blood sugar instead of storing it. It also extends the metabolism boosting effects of caffeine, so a glass of grapefruit juice with your coffee is the perfect fat busting breakfast.

Cinnamon

Similar to the reaction to spicy food, cinnamon allows your body to boost it's metabolism just slightly and speed up energy consumption. The effect is small but significant, and it's assisted by some of the other properties of cinnamon.

Cinnamon changes the way your body responds to sugars and carbohydrates, regulates the blood sugar and lowers the quantity of insulin produced. This means your body can gradually metabolize sugars instead of storing them as fat. One study estimated that the consumption of cinnamon lowered the glycemic index of food by 18-29%.

If you're on a diet that avoids sugar then cinnamon is a great thing to add to food for a bit of sweetness and a little help burning fat instead of adding to it.

High protein foods

By far the best way to improve your metabolism is to put on muscle. It costs three times as much energy as fat to maintain, and some experts estimate that for every pound of muscle you gain you burn 30-50 calories more per day.

As well as strength training, a high protein diet is an essential component of building muscle. When you exercise, your body repairs and strengthens the muscle fibers using the various different amino acids that protein is made of. Complete proteins that contain all the essential amino acids should be about 30% of your daily calorie intake if you're trying to put on more muscle and boost your metabolism.

Protein also takes more energy to digest than either carbohydrates or fat – between 20% and 30% of the energy you get from protein is used to process it, meaning you start burning it off as soon as you eat it.