How To Increase Your Metabolism (Eat More, Lose More)

in this video I'm going to be answering the question of whether or not you can speed up your metabolism for example how many extra calories would you burn by drinking more water throughout the day muscle is metabolically active does that mean that building more muscle will increase your metabolic rate drinking green tea is supposed to boost metabolism does it actually and if so how many extra calories does it burn eating spicy food makes you sweat does that give a metabolic boost speaking of sweating does Sauna increase metabolism or is cold exposure better shivering definitely burns

calories but exactly how many thousands of people follow reverse dieting does it work and does cardio slow metabolism down or speed it up I'm going to answer all these questions in this video but first to get everyone on the same page let's quickly cover what metabolism actually is in a fitness context where the goal is to either lose fat or build muscle what we really mean by metabolism is metabolic rate or total energy expenditure we want to know how many calories your body Burns per day so when we say that someone has a Fast Metabolism

what we really mean is that their body Burns a lot of calories allowing them to eat more food and when you say someone has a slow metabolism we mean their body doesn't burn as many calories and they often have to diet on less food to see weight loss but how different are people's metabolisms anyway if we took two people of the same sex at the same height and the same body weight could their metabolisms actually be all that different yes they could be metabolic rates are extremely individual much more so than many people even realize

just take a look at some of the findings from this massive 2022 study on daily energy expenditure and over 6 000 subjects from diverse backgrounds that was published in science one of the world's most reputable journals this figure Compares body weight here on the x-axis with total energy expenditure or what Fitness people would call metabolism each one of these blue and yellow dots represents a different person blue dots are male yellow dots are female if we pick a weight here in the middle at 80 kilos or 176 pounds you can see that the person with

the so-called slowest metabolism only burned about 1 1400 calories per day while the person with the fastest metabolism burned a whopping 5 700 calories per day at the exact same body weight that means the person with the slowest metabolism would need to eat under 1400 calories to lose weight while the person with the fastest metabolism would lose weight eating 5 000 calories per day so then the burning question is is there a way for the person with the so-called slow metabolism to speed their metabolism up so they get to eat more calories this is an

important question because if we get to eat more calories while dieting we'll not only get the satisfaction of having more food we may also feel less depleted perform better in the gym and retain more muscle so it's worth figuring out and I'm going to break each strategy into one of three groups it works it might work and it probably doesn't work for boosting metabolism let's start with water does drinking more water increase metabolism the answer is yes a little each glass of cold water you drink Burns about eight calories so every time you drink another

glass of cold water you get an extra eight calorie boost cold water gives a bigger boost than room temperature water because your body has to burn calories to heat the cold water up to body temperature now put the full calculation up here on the screen if you're curious how it came to that eight calorie figure but I'm still going to put water in the might work category that's because even though water loading sounds like a decent strategy on paper I'm not convinced it would actually translate to substantially better fat loss over the long term it's

possible that the extra calories you burn from drinking more water could be compensated for for example you could drink more water but then subconsciously move around a little less so that the net boost cancels out at least partially I'm also not a fan of Force drinking water if you overdo it with ultra high water intakes within a short time frame you can develop water intoxication or hyponatremia which can be dangerous so generally speaking 8 to 12 glasses or about two to three liters per day is plenty and most people can simply use their internal thur

signals to guide their intake water can help you feel more full at meals though so if it does help you keep your daily caloric intake down drink away all right then what about green tea a simple Google search returns over 40 million results for green tea and Metabolism some boasting up to an 8 Spike but what does the science say well this 2021 systematic review found that of the four studies looking at acute metabolic effects three of the four found no effect while one study found a 79 calorie increase in Daily energy expenditure digging into

that study deeper however there were only 10 subjects and it only lasted 24 hours so I wouldn't draw any strong conclusions from it also there are at least two studies on green tea and long-term fat loss and both found no benefit so while you may get a small metabolic Boost from green tea it doesn't seem to translate to more fat loss over the long term and for that reason I'm putting it in the probably doesn't work category then there's spicy food like this bowl of green curry chicken and rice in this case green curry gets

its heat from ginger garlic lemongrass and Chili Peppers Chili Peppers seem to be the most promising from a metabolic standpoint since they contain a compound called capsaicin which has plenty of research showing a thermogenic effect for example this 2017 meta-analysis of nine studies found that on average capsaic an increased energy expenditure by 69 calories per day but only in the studies where the subject's BMI was over 25 so the overweight Zone in this bowl of green chili there's about 0.5 grams of chili pepper which will correspond to about two milligrams of capsaicin extrapolating out the

meta-analytic data most generously that would give me at best a roughly 20 calorie metabolic boost obviously this pales in comparison to the 700 calories in the meal itself but it could be enough to make capsaicin a reasonable candidate for supplementation still I think the main reason that spicy food can be helpful for weight loss is not that it might give a 20 calorie metabolic boost but rather that it can increase satiety and fullness I find I eat more slowly and drink more water when I have a spicy meal and if that helps you eat less

total calories for the day that could be helping Drive fat loss All Things Considered I'm putting spicy food in the might work category alright so what about sauna you sweat in the sauna does this mean you're burning extra calories well according to this 1995 study from Japan Sana did increase oxygen consumption and heart rate by 20 to 25 beats per minute so for 180 pound person this would translate to about 19 calories burned from sitting in the sauna for 10 minutes for compare Harrison you'd burn about 14 calories just sitting in a normal room for

10 minutes so you're looking at about a five calorie difference that's one stick of gum nothing worth talking about Sonic goes in the probably doesn't work category for boosting metabolism obviously cold plunges and Ice baths are having a moment on social media but do they boost your metabolism well it looks like oxygen consumption does increase when you sit in a cold bath and you do shiver which indicates a metabolic boost however the actual numbers are pretty underwhelming if you sit neck deep in an ice bath for 10 minutes you burn about 28 calories again for

comparison you'd burn 14 calories just sitting at room temperature so you're looking at about a 14 calorie Boost from the cold bath cold baths are also going in the probably doesn't work category but what about building muscle you've likely heard that muscle burns more calories than fat and this is true three times the amount in fact at rest one pound of fat Burns about two calories per day while one pound of muscle Burns about six calories per day I did some quick math based on my current body composition and it looks like if I just

sat down down all day the fat on my body would burn 24 calories and the muscle on my body would burn 480 calories that's a 456 calorie difference not bad at all let's consider you as an example let's just say you're a relatively new lifter and over the course of the next five years you put on 30 pounds of muscle if you burn 2 500 calories per day before you'd burn 2 680 calories per day now after adding the new muscle so a 180 calorie difference that's about four extra kiwis you could eat per day

so far this is the biggest metabolic booster we've seen and so I'm going to put building muscle in the it works category okay so what about reverse dieting this has become very popular over the last few years reverse dieting is exactly what it sounds like the reverse of dieting instead of decreasing calories you gradually increase calories with the goal of rebuilding your metabolism now I'm planning on doing a full video on reverse dieting in the fall so for now I'll just say that I'm a bit skeptical of it for sure I have seen plenty of

cases where people have increased their caloric intake by several hundred calories while maintaining their body weight but my main gripe with reverse dieting is that I just don't think it's necessary to go slowly after a diet I think it makes much more sense to go straight to your new maintenance right away then once you're at your new maintenance you can more gradually increase your caloric intake from there of course at a certain point you'll reach the upper limit of your Dynamic maintenance range and at that point you'll start gaining weight now if you're eager to

learn more about reverse dieting I'll link an article by Eric Trexler down below that more or less lines up with my stance on the topic as of now I'm going to put reverse dieting in the might work category and you can subscribe and stay tuned for my full video on it okay so what about meal frequency does eating more meals throughout the day keep the metabolic furnace burning it doesn't seem to no this 2012 study had subjects spend three days in an isolated respiration chamber while eating either three meals per day or 14 meals per

day with the same total calories and found no difference in energy expenditure there's also this 2015 meta-analysis pooling 15 studies which also found no significant difference in fat Mass from eating one to two three to four or five plus meals per day even though from this graph it does look like the higher meal frequency was better that result is being dragged up by a single study this one from Ewell and colleagues and the authors note that once you remove that study from the analysis the difference goes away now you can interpret that as you wish

but I'm personally not convinced that a higher meal frequency gives a meaningful boost in metabolism and I'm putting you know frequency in the probably doesn't work category okay so what about cardio cardio obviously burns calories however research shows that cardio also causes something called Energy compensation this means that when you burn more calories through cardio your body subconsciously Burns less calories through meat or non-exercise activity thermogenesis this is the component of metabolism that includes activities other than exercise so stuff like fidgeting and bobbing your head to music for example let's say on a normal day

you fidget and Shuffle away 500 calories through meat but today you decide to go for a 30 minute Jog and the jog also Burns 500 calories what happens next is that your body will sense the Jog and subconsciously move around a little less now you only burn 350 calories through meat of course you still get a net caloric burn from including the jog but it is offset to some degree now there are large individual differences in energy compensation but on average for every 100 calories you burn by doing cardio you'll only actually increase your daily

energy expenditure by 72 calories and this is why I prefer to use diet as the main tool for establishing a caloric deficit and use cardio as a secondary tool as with cardio you do tend to get less caloric bang for your buck still even with energy compensation in mind cardio does burn calories and as such it belongs in the it works category the next thing I want to touch on is weighted vests there's some cool science behind this the general idea is if I weigh 160 pounds right now and I start wearing a 20 pound

weighted vest my body starts to think that I weigh 180 pounds and burns calories like 180 pound person would recent evidence has suggested distance of a system of sensors in the body called the gravitastat which senses changes in loading on the bones if these sensors get the idea that you're now a heavier person it'll increase your caloric expenditure and decrease hunger levels my friend and natural Pro bodybuilder Eric Salazar did a case study with exercise scientist James Krieger where he wore a 34 pound weighted vest for 90 percent of his waking hours during a competition

prep he got down to an incredibly shredded five percent body fat by sort of tricking his body into thinking he was 34 pounds heavier than he really was and in comparison to past diets he says he didn't have to suffer as many of the bad side effects of getting shredded so I'm tempted to put weighted vests in the it works category because I think it probably does however I'm going to leave it under the might work category for now until we get more published research lastly there are two other less sexy but still very effective

metabolic strategies that I'd like to mention first avoid dieting on very low calories the more aggressively you cut the more your metabolic rate decreases so generally speaking you should aim to lose about 0.5 to 1 one percent of your body weight per week and the more you go above this Zone the more likely it is that your metabolism will start tanking slow dieting definitely works second you should try to smuggle in extra non-exercise activity where you can this is where the weighted vest might be helpful but there are other things you can do like Park

further from the grocery store take the stairs over the elevator and regularly stand up and stretch at your desk I call these little activities throughout the day meat smuggling and I'd also put it in the it works category it's also worth keeping in mind that even if you implement some of these strategies and you still have a relatively slower metabolism you can of course still lose weight in fact research shows that metabolic rate isn't nearly as predictive of successful long-term weight loss as many people think people with faster metabolisms can fail to lose weight in

people with slower metabolisms can succeed to lose weight and that things more reliably associated with successful long-term weight loss are being Physically Active regularly weighing yourself weight training and making Lifestyle Changes another thing that's been helping thousands of people lose fat while keeping track of their metabolism is the macro Factor app if you aren't aware I'm a part owner of macro factor and I've been using it to guide my own fat loss Journey where I've lost almost 30 pounds relying entirely on the app's algorithms macrofactor is so effective because it'll update your diet based on

your unique metabolism whether that's faster or slower all you have to do is lock your weight and your nutrition and the app will give you the ideal nutrition targets for your goal and there's a growing community of people online sharing their own success stories from using the app other methods like online calculators or smart watches can be off by hundreds of calories per day and macro factor is much more reliable because it responds to your individual weight changes exactly like a coach would and then makes the appropriate adjustments based on your metabolism specifically macrofactor also

has the easiest and fastest food logger on the market we've done comparison experiments to test this it has a super fast Barcode Scanner and AI features that allow you to describe meals that are more difficult to log for example if you eat out at a restaurant that doesn't have the nutritional info you can use the AI describe tool to log what you ate we also massively expanded our European food database recently which I know a lot of you guys have been waiting for so if you'd like to try out macro factor for yourself you can

get a free two-week trial at the first link in the description box below or you can scan the QR code over here next to my head alright that's it for this one guys don't forget to leave me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you guys all here in the next one