Metabolism Boost Part 2

Pump It and Feed It
Weight training is the most effective, and lasting method of increasing your lean muscle mass and increasing metabolism. Only in the last decade or so has weight or resistance training become popular with women as well as men. Many of us in the past have had preconceived notions of dirty smelly gyms where bulky massive body builders or power builders worked out with heavy iron weights. I can remember in the 1980s going to the doctor complaining about tenderness in my wrists from lifting weights. He asked me what I had been doing. I told him that I had begun lifting weights just a few months ago. I was getting in the best shape of my life, but was having some soreness in my wrists only. My doctor at the time told me that lifting weights was very bad for me and that I should stop it right away. The soreness was only tendonitis and left me once I slacked off a bit. As good as my body was beginning to look, I had no intention of stopping lifting. But things have certainly changed. Much of the stigma is gone. Now it's pretty much common knowledge about the benefits of weight training. However, keep in mind that different people lift weights for different reasons. In the same way that aerobic exercise forces heart muscle to adapt to increased cardiovascular demands, weight lifting forces leg, arm and back muscles to grow and increase strength. Larger muscles and muscle groups have higher energy demands and the effect is that metabolism shifts into high gear.

Exercising for just 20 to 30 minutes is plenty enough time to raise your metabolic rate. Workouts of this length will boost calorie burning for several hours. The more you exercise, the more you raise your metabolic rate, not just for hours but for days and months.

Once you get your metabolic rate increased, you have to feed it. This point seems to cause problems with a lot of dieters. Once people have increased their metabolism they tend not to take in enough calories. They think of food as an adversary and cut back. Not eating enough food at this point has an unexpected result. Once you stop eating the body perceives starvation and automatically slows down your metabolism. Our bodies were designed to operate in a much different environment then the one most of us live in now. In our historical hunter gatherer past our survival depended on conserving energy.