Metabolism in the human body is controlled by a complex mixture of factors, including genes, hormones, diet and physical activity. Importantly, your eating habits, including how much and how often you eat, can play a significant role in setting your metabolism. If you are attempting to lose weight, consult your doctor or a qualified nutritionist to develop a safe weight-loss plan suited to your body type.
Thermic Effect of Food
When you eat food, your body must expend calories to break down, digest and absorb the nutrients in the food. This expenditure of energy after eating food is known as the thermic effect, explains the Student Nutrition and Body Image Awareness Campaign at the University of California, Los Angeles. The small increase in metabolism lasts for approximately five hours. However, the amount of calories burned to digest food is very small compared to the total amount of calories burned by your body in a single day.
Binge Eating
Because eating causes your metabolism to increase slightly, you may think that eating more food, such as large binges, might increase your metabolism more. While this might be true in the short term, in the long term this attempt to increase your metabolism will backfire. The extra calories burned to digest the extra food is unlikely to make up for the extra calories consumed with the food. Additionally, frequent binge eating often leads to obesity, warns WomensHealth.gov. For some unknown reason, the metabolism of obese people does not increase after eating food as much as the metabolism of lean people.
Dieting
To keep your metabolism high, it is important to eat frequently, but smaller meals are better than larger meals, explains Illinois State University. Eating small meals four to six times per day ensures that your body has a consistent supply of energy and does not think it needs to conserve energy. Skipping meals or following very restrictive diets can cause your body to enter into starvation mode and decrease metabolism to conserve energy.
Exercise
Exercise plays an important role in setting your metabolism. Physical activity temporarily increases your metabolism, including short intervals of activity like walking up the stairs or walking across a large parking lot. Finding ways to stay active throughout the day can help to keep your metabolism high. Increasing your muscle mass can also boost your metabolism. Muscle is an energetically expensive tissue, and adding lean muscle to your body increases your basal metabolic rate, explains the Student Nutrition and Body Image Awareness Campaign.
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