Common question I get, “How do I increase my metabolism?.” Understand this, the people with high metabolisms for their size simply move more.
👉🏻There are a few different components of daily energy expenditure — RMR (energy it takes to breathe, fuel our internal organs, etc)
TEF (the calories we burn during digestion)
EAT (calories burn during exercise,
and NEAT (fidgeting, posture, walking & other general movement).
When most people think of boosting their metabolism, they think of affecting the first two, RMR and TEF. But these make a microscopic difference.
Eating 6 meals per day doesn’t make a difference to weight loss. We just get 6 smaller bumps in the TEF rather than 3 larger spikes with 3 meals.
Green tea, red hot chili peppers , and other superfoods touted for boosting metabolism might increase calorie expenditure by something minuscule like 3 calories per day, but it would never make any meaningful difference with weight loss.
Even gaining muscle doesn’t make a big difference contrary to popular belief (it’s more like 5-6 calories per lb as opposed to 50-60 calories like some people say).
However, we can greatly increase our daily energy expenditure via movement, especially NEAT.
The downside is that most of the changes with NEAT happen at a subconscious level. When we’re dieting and losing weight, we generally move less. Instead of tapping our leg when we’re at our desk, we sit still. Instead of deciding go get up and to check the mail, we wait until we’re outside anyway. This subconscious down-regulation can make a huge difference.
Luckily it’s possible to combat some of these things and bring them to our conscious awareness. We can wear a Fitbit and track our steps. We can stand instead of sit, walk to work, take the dogs for a walk, take the stairs instead of the escalator, and park far away at the grocery store.