Diets To Make Your Metabolism Faster

We all know them. Those people who can seemingly eat at will and never gain an ounce. Those people blessed with a fast metabolism. If you feel cursed with a slow metabolism, there is encouraging news--you can help speed up your metabolism through a program of diet and exercise.

Components of Metabolism

Your total daily metabolic rate consists of your basal metabolic rate, or the amount of energy required to maintain vital functions such as breathing; the thermic effect of exercise, or the amount of energy to fuel exercise activities; and the thermic effect of food, which includes the energy used in chewing, swallowing, peristalsis, digestion, absorption and excretion. There are many ways to raise your metabolic rate by the influence of your diet on the thermic effect of food.

Increase Dietary Protein

The typical American diet consists of approximately 58 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent fat and 12 percent protein. Foods rich in carbohydrates and fats are relatively easy to digest and do not require large amounts of metabolic energy. Increasing the percentage of lean proteins in your diet, from sources such as fish and poultry, will utilize greater amounts of metabolic energy and raise your daily metabolic rate. Some diet programs recommend up to 40 percent protein in the diet.

Increase Complex Carbohydrates

Simple carbohydrates, or sugars, and highly refined complex carbohydrates such as the starch in white bread, are fairly easy to digest and don't require much metabolic energy. Increasing your intake of unrefined complex carbohydrates will challenge your digestive system to work harder and consume more metabolic energy in the process. Increase your intake of whole grain and multigrain starches in your daily diet.

Eat Smaller and More Frequent Meals

Each time you sit down to eat, regardless of the amount of food consumed, you activate your digestive system and it begins to consume metabolic energy. Without increasing the total amount of food you eat, break your daily food consumption down into six small meals, rather than the more traditional three large meals. Activating your digestive system system more frequently, without adding more calories to your daily intake, will add to the increase in your daily metabolic rate.

Add Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

B vitamins, particularly B6, B12, thiamin, niacin and folic acid, are necessary to help the enzymes that drive your metabolic reactions. Magnesium is an important cofactor in many of the enzymes as well. Make sure your diet has sufficient levels of the B vitamins and the mineral magnesium for a higher metabolic rate.