What does boosting your metabolism have to do with cooking yourself thin? Well, it’s a balance. Getting control of your eating habits is the most important thing in living at a healthy weight. You can’t exercise your way out of unhealthy eating habits.
Maybe we could when we were teenagers, but chances are, we were just fooling ourselves. Our metabolism does decrease as we age, but it doesn’t have to. There are simple things you can do to build back up a healthy metabolism.
You can help yourself if you do regular movement daily.
Movement
Movement is just walking. You don’t have to run a marathon. Unless that’s your thing. In which case, I’ll be cheering you along.
There is wisdom to those little bon mots of taking the stairs and parking farther out. Get a step counter or set something up on your phone to track it. But try and get a baseline the first week.
Do not think about what that number is. It’s just your starting point. It’s not a reflection on you.
Then work to improve it. Take it slowly. Increase it about 5-10% every week after that. When it’s natural and effortless, you’ll stick with it.
Don’t think you have to do it all at once. I’ll walk after breakfast and lunch. I’m working to get walking after dinner again. But I have my excuses right now. (It’s dark out. It’s raining. etc. etc.)
Muscle Mass
Muscles burn more calories than fat. And it makes you feel a lot better to have firmer flesh.
And no, you don’t have to go to the gym and pump iron for hours at a time. There is training out there that teaches you to raise and lower heavier weights very slowly. That gets you an intense workout in a shorter period of time.
Don’t want to do it at all? Look into yoga and Pilates. That uses your own body mass as the weights and you will build up muscle mass. Also, you get some stretching in which is another great way to look thinner even if you don’t lose any weight.
No More Dieting
It’s sad but true that when we starve ourselves to lose a few pounds and then go back to normal eating, we gain more weight. Why? We told our metabolism to go into shutdown mode.
Some people feel that eating lots of little meals will boost your metabolism. Others feel that three larger meals gives your body the chance to process the food and balances out the insulin levels before you pop in more food.
Every body is different. Do what’s best for you. Try it out. Just no more dieting. Eat good quality food in smaller amounts.
Do Some Foods Help?
I know some foods hurt like margarine and sugar. I was reading Metabolic Cooking to get some inspiration. Their idea is that a lot of cookbooks just provide recipes but no real structure teaching you how to put together meals. And diet books rely upon eating the same kinds of food over and over again.
It’s all digital I didn’t get the up-sell since I don’t mind doing my own meal planning. Feel free to check it out. It was only $10. I really liked the metabolic calorie free dressings. I’ve been needing some inspiration.
For the Metabolic Cooking itself, there are 9 cookbooks:
- Vegetarian
- Snacks
- Sides
- Red Meat
- Pork
- Metabolicious Smoothies
- Fish & Seafood
- Breakfast
- Chicken & Poultry
The recipes are for 2 servings. And the nutrition information is clear. Not all of them have images. But the recipes are easy to read and follow. I can install it on my Nook or Kindle and set that up in my kitchen.
Check it out if you’re interested. Let me know what you thought.
Now it’s time to go for a walk.
