Health and Fitness

Health and Fitness - How to Repair a Damaged Metabolism:

If you've caused metabolic damage as a result of following starvation diets or losing weight too rapidly in the past, it can be extremely difficult to achieve any further fat loss at all. The good news is, metabolic damage can be repaired. All it takes is the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition (not just a diet), all done consistently over time.

The big irony is that most of the diet programs that claim to help you get rid of excess weight, only end up making it harder for you in the long run because they use harsh metabolism-decreasing diets and not enough exercise (almost never any weight training).


It may take a little longer if you have really messed things up with severe starvation dieting in the past, especially if you've lost a lot of lean body mass, but it is never hopeless. Anyone can increase their metabolism.


The most important thing for upping your metabolism is CONSISTENCY in applying nutrition and training principles every single day.

That includes:


*Meal frequency: eat 5-6 small meals per day.

*Meal timing: eat approximately every 3 hours, with a substantial breakfast and a substantial post workout meal.

*Sufficient Caloric Intake: maintain a small calorie deficit and avoid starvation-level diets (suggested safe levels for fat loss: 2100-2500 calories per day for men, 1400-1800 calories per day for women; adjust as needed).

*Food choices: Select natural, unprocessed foods with high thermic effect (lean proteins like chicken, turkey, egg whites and fish are highly thermic, as are all green vegetables, salad vegetables and other fibrous carbs).

* Cardio training: Push up the intensity a bit if you really want to get a metabolic boost. Walking and low intensity cardio is fine, but higher intensity is more metabolism-stimulating.

*Weight training: The basic exercises that include the largest muscle groups or even call into play the entire body as a unit (squats, front squats, split squats, deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, overhead presses, all kinds of rows and core-activation exercises) will have a much greater metabolism stimulating effect than isolation exercises (concentration curls, calf raises, etc)

Consistency is the key.

Nothing will undermine the "re-building" of your metabolism like inconsistency. If you stop and start, or skip meals and workouts often, you will not even get off the ground.

Trying to starve the fat with crash diets is what causes the metabolic damage in the first place.

Once you get your metabolic engine running, you've got to keep feeding it fuel or the fire will die down.

More at: http://www.fitnessattitudes.com/metabolism.html