Best Diet for Slow Metabolism

Whenever you feel like your health is being compromised, your weight gain is increasing at a rapid rate, fatigues, lock of interest, and motivation in doing simple things in life. These are the signs that you need to pay attention to your body. You need a course of action to change your behavior because the problem is not going to get better on its own.

Other effective ways to manage your weight is to use the half and half theories. The way it works is to use portion control, to fill up your plate with half fruits, half vegetables, and the half with protein. Another way is to use intermittent diets, you skip meals in between, That way you don’t deprive yourself of things that you like to eat, you just need to eat them in moderation. 

Just to let you know, dieting is not an easy task, it is rather a conscious decision that needs to be readjusted from time to time, trust me you are not alone in this! To better understand how intermittence diet works click here.

As a result, changing a bad eating habit to a healthy lifestyle can in turn help you lose weight, live a better and longer life. I am a firm believer in the old saying healthy heart, happy life!

Part 2.

More Information On Obesity And Best Diet For slow metabolism.

Different people have different metabolic rates, and this difference dictates the type of food or diet such should take. Our gender also affects how much calories we burn; men burn more calories than women even at the resting stage. For both genders, metabolism usually slows down when one hits approximately age 40. The lower or slower the metabolism, the lower the calories burnt and vice versa for those with higher metabolism.

Below are some of the food’s nutrition which are diet-friendly foods that you can take if you have a slow metabolism.

1. Foods nutrition that is rich in protein.

   

Foods such as meat, eggs, fish, legumes, nuts, dairy, and seeds increase or raise your metabolism in a matter of just a few hours. Protein-rich foods increase metabolism by requiring your body to use a lot more energy when digestion is taking place. A process is known as the thermic effect of food(TEF). (Alina Petre, 2014)https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/metabolism-boosting-foods. The thermic effect of food is the number of calories that the body needs to either digest, absorb, or in processing this nutrient found in your meals. It has been proved through research that foods which are highly rich in protein increase your thermic effect of food the most and hence increase your metabolic rate by close to 15% to 30%. And this is when compared to 5% to 10% in carbs and 0% to 3% in fats (Alina Petre, 2014) https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/metabolism-boosting-foods.

2. Selenium rich foods, zinc, and Iron

For your body to function correctly and well, it requires Iron, zinc, and selenium, which all perform and play a different but very vital role (Fan, 2017) as quoted in https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/British-journal-of-nutrition/article/dietary-leucine-supplementation-alters-energy-metabolism-and-induces-slow to fast-transitions-in-longissimus-dorsi-muscle-of-weanling-piglets/BBBF9724C3B61D3AF492CA396A99C82B. What is common across all this food is that they are required by your thyroid gland to function correctly. The thyroid is the organ in your body that regulates your body’s metabolism. For you to raise your slow metabolism, you are supposed to eat more food or diets which are rich in Iron, Zinc, or selenium, which increases your thyroid gland ability to produce enough hormones. Therefore, if you have a slow metabolism, you need to eat foods that will help your thyroid function well to its best ability. This iron-rich food, seafood, legumes, and nuts should always be on your menu every day.

3. Chili and Peppers

The number of calories you burn determines your metabolic rate, and capsaicin, which is a chemical found in chili peppers, boosts your metabolism by raising the number of calories that your body burns. Capsaicin usually helps your body burn approximately 50 more calories each day when you take chili pepper. It is recommended that you include around 135 to 150 milligrams of capsaicin in a single day (Alina Petre, 2014) in her journal https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/metabolism-boosting-foods. Capsaicin has also been attributed in some studies that it reduces the number of calories consumed mostly from carbs, it’s recommended you consume around 2 milligrams just before taking your meal.

4. Coffee

Caffeine, which is a chemical found in coffee, has been found to improve metabolic rate by a record 11% (Sonnenburg, 2016) https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18846. Consuming approximately 270 milligrams of caffeine every day helps you burn an extra 100 calories daily. Also, caffeine aids in the burning of fat used as a source of energy by your body and is beneficial, especially in boosting workout. However, caffeine has other effects different from person to person and also different effects based on your body weight and age as well.

5. Tea

Just like caffeine in coffee, catechins, which is a chemical found in tea, boosts your metabolism, especially oolong and green tea, specifically increase your metabolism by approximately 4% to 10% (Alina Petre, 2014) sourced from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/metabolism-boosting-foods. It is equivalent to burning 100 extra calories in a single day. Similarly, oolong and green tea aid in fat-burning ability by a whopping 17%. And just like caffeine in coffee, the effects of catechins vary from person to another.

6. Spices boosting metabolism

Some spices have been found to aid in increasing your metabolic rate. For example, when you take approximately 2 milligrams of ginger powder either in water or as a meal, it helps you burn about 43 calories. Grains of paradise have the same effect as ginger though they come from the same ginger family. The results of these spices differ and vary from a person to another.

7. Cacao and Cocoa

Cocoa and cacao have been found to stimulate your body to use more energy, for an organization to produce extra energy, metabolism must take effect. Hence cocoa indirectly increases your metabolic rate.

References:

(Alina Petre, 2014), The 12 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism, Healthline, nutrition journal.

Fan, Q., Long, B., Yan, G., Wang, Z., Shi, M., Bao, X., … & Yan, X. (2017). Dietary leucine supplementation alters energy metabolism and induces slow-to-fast transitions in the longissimus dorsi muscle of weanling piglets. British Journal of Nutrition, 117(9), 1222-1234.

Sonnenburg, J. L., & Bäckhed, F. (2016). Diet–microbiota interactions as moderators of human metabolism. Nature, 535(7610), 56-64.