Metabolic Make Over

by Kris Pitcher

Now this is a hot topic! It's sciency and you know I'm going to get excited! We have some room for improvement when it comes to heating up our metabolism. So, today we're going to take the three "M" approach to a metabolic make over.

The first of the three M's is Morning. If you aren't a morning person, that's OK. But we've got to get things going first thing in the morning. We have slept over night, hopefully a full 7-8 hours. When we wake - we need to fuel. During our sleeping hours, we haven't had any fuel and our metabolism begins to slow.

Morning is the time to get our metabolism going by putting some fuel in the tank. I like to think of our metabolism as a fire. We need to add fuel to the fire to keep it burning. No fuel, the fire goes out. In this time of opportunity we want a fast acting fuel, and a whey protein is perfect. It is fast digesting and gets us off to a great start.

The next M is, Muscle. We lose muscle as we age. But this isn't necessarily age related, it's activity related. We become more sedentary as we age. Use it or lose it. So, it's time to increase our muscle mass to increase our metabolism. Muscle tissue is metabolically active tissue. It's burning fat all the time for fuel.

We tend to think of doing cardiovascular exercise when we want to lose fat. And that's important, however we want to increase our metabolism by adding strength training to our program. This is an effective metabolic boosting strategy. The more muscle mass we maintain, the higher our metabolism.

Our final M in our metabolic make over is Meals. We started our morning with fuel and we need to keep that fire burning all day long. This means mini meals throughout the day. Stoking the fire keeps that fire burning. Make sure you've got a plan that includes at least 4 meals and some snacks strategically planned during the day.

You've got 24 hours in the day to fuel your body. Your final meal should be before bed. What?! That's right, keep the fire burning into the night by fueling with the right kind of fuel before bed. A slow digesting protein works really well. Carbs at night = four letter word. No, no on carbs. It's critical to have the right fuel at the right time.

There's your three M approach to a metabolic make over. Get things heated up, burn more calories by getting your morning off to the right start, by increasing your muscle mass, and by making your meals count. Your metabolism is counting on it!