Weight Maintenance: Foods That Speed Up Your Metabolism

It has been discovered that there are certain types of foods and drinks that can actually help to speed up your metabolism as we all know that the secret to an effective weight-loss programme is to consume less calories than the body burns.

The average man needs about 2,500 Calories a day while the average woman requires about 2,000 Calories. It is also a well known fact that most of the people consume more than these amounts of calories on a regular basis.

There are three ways by which the body uses the calories contained in the foods and drinks we consume:

1. THE BASAL METABOLIC RATE (BMR): This is the measurement of the amount of energy the body needs just to remain alive. If you stay in bed all day without even moving a muscle your body is still using up calories just by being alive. This alone amounts to about 60% of the calories we burn everyday.

2. ACTIVITIES: We could burn an extra 30% by taking part in physical activities.

This is however where a lot of people miss it. Most people burn less than half the amount of calories they could burn taking part in physical activities.

3. DIETARY THERMOGENESIS: This is the energy involved in the process of eating, Digesting and absorbing the food into the body system.

This article is actually about the third way by which the body burns calories.

It has been discovered that the body sometimes requires more energy than is contained in a certain type of food to digest the food itself. Isn't that terrific?

For example, grapefruit. Assuming you eat a grapefruit that contains 55 Calories your body may actually require up to 90 calories to digest the grape fruit. Ever heard of the grapefruit diet?

Another example is chilli. Scientific experiments have shown that eating chilli could raise your metabolism by as much as 50% over three hours.

Another surprising if not amusing fact is that drinking cold water could also increase your metabolic rate. The body cannot use the water in that form it has to heat it up first before utilising it. The process of heating up the water will effectively increase metabolism.

Other examples include drinks that contain caffeine, like tea and coffee.

Some soda drinks also contain caffeine but the calories in these drinks contain may actually neutralise the calorie burning effect of the caffeine contained in them.

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