Are you constantly scaling down your calories, doing hours of cardio and still struggling to maintain or lose weight? Your metabolism has probably become a bit lazy. The good news is, you can fix this by focusing on 3 key factors: training, nutrition and sleep.

How to Boost your Metabolism

Strength-training

Yes, cardio burns a lot of calories. But no activity will help you increase your metabolism more than building muscle.

Why? Because muscle mass consumes more energy than fat. In other words, increasing your muscle mass helps you burn more calories at rest. Plus, every time you are doing resistance training your are sending your body a muscle-building signal.

As a result, more calories consumed up to 48h after lifting weights are being used to grow muscle. Telling your body that you want to build muscle is a very effective way to speed up your metabolism.

Not to mention that lifting heavy weights (that are really going to challenge you) requires a lot of energy and burn a fair amount of calories.

What’s the best way to build muscle? Prioritise compound exercises: squats, deadlifts, bench press, back rows… Don’t forget to rest between sets.

How to know that you’re on the right path? You’re getting stronger (you are able to lift heavier) and you are getting hungrier. Which brings me to the second point.

Nutrition

Dieting slows your metabolism down and you can’t build muscle when you’re restricting your calories. If you’re serious about speeding up your metabolism, you will need to slowly increase your calories before you start decreasing them. I’m talking about a slow increase: add 50 to 150 calories to your daily intake, stay at this level for about two weeks then slightly increase again. This slow approach will give your body more nutrients to build muscles and will therefore boost your metabolism.

Eat healthy and prioritise proteins as they are a key nutrient for muscle growth. Once you’re in a good place in terms of calorie intake then you can slowly start decreasing them in order to lose weight without ending up at 800 calories/day.

How to tell if it’s working? You’re eating more but your weight stays stable.

Sleep

You’ve probably read that people who are sleep-deprived tend to have more craving and to struggle to lose body fat. Why? Because a lot of metabolic and hormonal processes happen whilst you sleep. Running on too little sleep leads to an increase in Ghrelin (hunger hormone) and a decrease in leptin (the appetite regulating hormone) levels.

Sleeping better will not only help you eat healthier by controlling your cravings but it will also help your performance in the gym.

You can try various tips to improve your sleep: staying away from screens before bedtime, having an early dinner, avoiding caffeine in the afternoon, sleeping in a cool room…

Find out more about my Thrive Strong Programme.