Your metabolism is the process your body uses to get the energy (measured in numbers of calories) from the foods you eat. If your metabolism is faster, it will burn more energy or more calories.
So choosing foods that boost your metabolism increases how many calories you burn, and makes it easier to lose weight.
Try These Foods That Boost Metabolism
One of the best parts about eating foods that rev up your metabolism is that most of them are regular, everyday items, many of which you might already enjoy.
High-Protein Foods
Interestingly, your body burns calories to get more calories from the foods you eat. And it burns even more calories to get the calories from protein. That added calorie burn can increase your metabolic rate by twice as much as it does for other essential nutrients.
Proteins also help maintain muscle mass, which burns more calories than other soft tissue. Meat, fish, eggs, dairy, legumes, nuts and seeds are all healthy sources of protein.
Chilli Peppers
The very thing that makes chilli peppers hot also increases your resting metabolic rate. Numerous studies show that capsaicin, the active ingredient that makes you feel the burn in chilli peppers, can help your body burn up to 50 extra calories a day.
Other metabolism-boosting spices, including ginger and grains of paradise, have been shown to increase the burn of body fat.
Coffee & Tea
The caffeine in coffee and the caffeine and catechins in tea have been linked to increasing your metabolism.
Cocoa
This might be the tastiest way to help yourself maintain a healthy body weight. Cocoa is linked in lab tests to not only burning more calories but also to offer the added benefit of reducing the absorption of calories from the foods you eat.
Water
If you’re tired of hearing how much water you should drink every day, then hear this. Drinking adequate amounts of water may temporarily increase your metabolic rate by up to 30%.
If you’re wondering how that’s possible, about 40% of the calorie burn is due to heating the water to your body temperature after you drink it.
If you want to learn more about metabolism-boosting foods, and how they can contribute to healthy weight loss, call your nearest Herbal One location and speak with one of our trained nutritional consultants.
A healthy immune system can help you lose weight too. Find out how in our article “How to Boost Your Immune System”.