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boost metabolism with exercise

Metabolism can basically be described as how efficient your body is at burning calories.  There are 2 types of metabolic rate, resting metabolic rate and active metabolic rate.

Basal metabolic rate

This is simply the number of calories you burn if you simply lay on the couch all day without moving.  This amounts to around 60-75% of your total daily expenditure and is required to keep the body functioning as normal.  This is a surprisingly high percentage and would explain why some people do little or no activity and still stay slim.

Active metabolic rate

This includes the calories we burn during every day activity and exercise, making up the remaining 25-40% of calories.

Boosting metabolism

There are a number of ways to boost metabolism.  Every time we eat we burn calories purely to digest the food. Yet another reason to eat little and often. Exercise will boost metabolism in two main ways.

Aerobic activity increases the active metabolic rate by burning extra calories as well as making our fat burning potential more efficient.  Following aerobic activity there is an `afterburn` effect where we burn calories at a higher rate for up to 24 hours afterwards.

Weight training will maintain lean muscle tissue which is metabolically active and has a greater impact on basal metabolism.  Essentially the more muscle tissue we have the higher the basal metabolism (which accounts for 60-75% remember!).

Yet more reasons to eat little and often and exercise regularly.

From a weight loss perspective all exercise is good. The current guidelines are that we should do something on most days of the week and this could be anything from gardening to a walk in the forest. This can have a massive impact on weight loss as well as our health.

Exercise works well for a number of reasons

• It burns calories and therefore body fat
• It boost metabolism
• Exercise helps to reset hunger
• It promotes healthier living

Aerobic activity burns calories

Burning calories directly clearly helps weight loss or more importantly fat loss. An average workout burns 500 calories and this is a significant amount when you look at exercsing 3-4 times per week, every week of the year.

Resistance training boosts metabolism

When we perform resistance exercises wit even the lightest weights we increase muscle density. Muscle is a very metabolically active tissue as opposed to fat which just sits there doing nothing. So the more muscle we tone, the higher our metabolism. No there’s a way to lose weight!

High-carbohydrate sports drinks can boost athletic performance, and their effects may begin as soon as they hit the mouth, a new study suggests.

The researchers had endurance athletes rinse their mouths with either of two carb-containing drinks, the athletes’ exercise performance improved. The same was not true when the athletes were given water flavored with an artificial sweetener.

What’s more, brain scans showed that simply swishing the carbohydrate drinks around the mouth activated particular areas of the brain associated with pleasure and reward. Again, the artificially sweetened water did not have the same effects.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Physiology, suggest that sports drinks may help boost performance via receptors in the mouth that send signals to the brain.

“Our study has shown that during intense exercise lasting around one hour, performance can be improved by simply rinsing a carbohydrate solution in the mouth,” lead researcher Dr. Ed S. Chambers, of the University of Birmingham in the UK, told Reuters Health.

However, that does not mean that hard-working exercisers should simply rinse and spit, according to Chambers. Sports drinks also help keep the body hydrated and supply electrolytes and other nutrients.

The current findings, Chambers explained, show that in addition to their well-known metabolic effects, sports drinks may also act on the brain.

The results are based on two studies, each involving eight trained cyclists. All of the athletes underwent exercise testing on a stationary bike, once at the start of the study and again on separate visits to the exercise lab.

During those later tests, the study participants were given one of the two carbohydrate drinks — containing glucose, maltodextrin or water sweetened with saccharin.

In general, the study found, the athletes improved upon their initial performance when they rinsed their mouths with either one of the carbohydrate drinks, but not when they used water.

Using a brain imaging technique called fMRI, Chambers and his colleagues found that the carb drinks sparked activity in brain areas related to both movement control and pleasure.

The researchers speculate that the brain activation allowed the athletes to work harder without feeling like they were.

During a long exercise bout, Chambers explained, the brain receives “negative” messages from the body, like elevated temperature and joint pain. The brain reacts by reducing the “central drive” to working muscles, curbing their power output.

“We propose that when an oral carbohydrate stimulus is present during exercise,” Chambers said, “this ‘positive’ signal to the brain maintains the central drive to the exercising muscle, thus improving performance.”

Calorie burning

When it comes to exercise, calories burned is definitely an issue. An hour of hard work in the gym needs to be worthwhile so here are some average calories burned by a 70kg person shown by the type of moderate to intense activity: