What is the key factor for ridding the body of excess fat? That's right, decreasing calories! With a caloric deficit - achievable by either a change in your eating habits, additional exercise, or the best combination of both - you will lose weight.

Your diet and exercise patterns both relate to your energy level. For example, without food you lack energy, and without energy, it's difficult for you to exercise. The human body gets natural energy from food through metabolism.

It's no surprise then, that many Organic Liaison members usually ask: "How do I increase my energy?" The key is to increase your metabolism. However, around age 30, our metabolism starts to slow down due to the loss of skeletal muscle mass; this rate of decrease becomes even faster at age 50. (Tzankoff and Norris J Appl Physiol.1977; 43: 1001-1006).

Thankfully, we can actively prevent our metabolism from slowing down by following these 5 Key Steps to Boost Energy

1. Eat smaller meals more often. Eat within 1 to 1 ½ hours after waking and every 3 to 4 hours throughout the day.  If you wait longer than 5 hours to eat, your metabolism slows down. Your body goes into hibernation mode: it thinks that you are experiencing famine/starvation and starts storing extra fat! Therefore, you should eat smaller meals, 6 times a day.

Just the action of eating (digesting, absorbing, and transporting food) helps you burn more calories. A balanced metabolic burner snack contains enough calories to utilize the thermic effect of food (the energy our body uses to consume food. A good snack is approximately 150 calories (e.g. 1 cup of blueberries and 12 raw almonds).

Eating smaller meals and snacking more often will not only increase your metabolism, but will also help you stay energized all day, keeping your sugar levels stabilized and helping to prevent fat storage.

2. Exercise to increase your caloric expenditure. Aim to exercise, which is simply moving, about 1 hour a day - preferably by doing something you enjoy, so that you stay inspired. This can mean walking, jogging, or dancing daily.

Feel comforted knowing that any moving you do during the day counts towards your 60 minutes of exercise. If you have never exercised before, increase your movement by incorporating little changes to your daily physical activity (e.g. taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking further from your destination, walking around while on the phone, dancing or marching around the house or office. Just move whenever you can.

An hour of exercise significantly speeds up your weight loss. For example, if you walk briskly for 1 hour, you can burn as much as 400 calories. With that change in exercise and about another 100-calorie deficit through a change in diet (e.g. removing a banana or a tablespoon of mayonnaise from your daily consumption), you could lose 1 pound a week!

3. Do resistance training 2 to 3 times per week to increase your muscle mass. Resistance training (e.g. weight lifting or resistance tubing) for at least 15 minutes per session will help transform your physical body into a better calorie burner.

The more muscle you have on your body, the more calories you burn - even while you are asleep! One pound of muscle burns 3 times more calories than 1 pound of fat, and that all adds up! Doing weight training 2 to 3 times per week boosts your basal metabolic rate, or the amount of energy your body uses daily while at rest. (A Quarterly Publication of the American College of Sports Medicine, 1/26/2006).

4. Include thermogenic foods and green tea in your day. Thermogenic foods help increase metabolism and calorie burning. You can drink Organic Liaison Rescue Me and take 2 capsules of Organic Liaison Pagoda a day to get your green tea nutrients. Or, you can drink green tea.

The antioxidants in green tea help curb cravings and increases calorie burning.

Add some EPA and DHA into your diet by consuming fish oil, ground flaxseeds, shelled hemp seeds, and chia seeds. Eating foods with 300 milligrams of EPA and DHA per serving may speed up metabolism so much that your body could burn up to 400 extra calories per day!

Other metabolic booster foods include hot sauce, chili peppers, and hot pepper flakes. The antioxidant which makes peppers hot also boosts heart rate and speeds up metabolism, especially during the hour and a half after a meal. Studies also show a reduction in insulin levels after a spicy meal. Keeping your insulin levels low after meals contributes to a high metabolism, preventing excess fat storage.

Boost your metabolism further by including protein in your meals and snacks. The body uses up to twice as many calories when digesting protein, compared to when digesting carbohydrates and fat (Journal of the American Dietetic Association;109 (9): 1582-1586).

5. Sip water throughout the day. Aim to drink about 10 cups of water per day.  Research shows that drinking 500 ml of water a day can increase metabolic rate by 30% (The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism;88 (12):6015-6019). The best test to tell whether you are well hydrated is to look at your urine - keep it clear.  Everyone has different water needs; it largely depends on the efficiency of your body's cooling system and how often you exercise.

What is the key factor that we need to decrease to get rid of excess fat? Yes, you guessed it, CALORIES! With a caloric deficit, either with a change in your eating or exercising more, best to do both, you will lose weight. That is why we focus on calories at Organic Liaison. A common question that I get from a lot of Organic Liaison members, "How do I change my metabolism?" After approximately age 30, our metabolism starts to slow down due to sarcopenia, the loss of skeletal muscle mass. The rate of decrease becomes much faster at age 50. Research shows an estimated 35% to 40% decrease of skeletal muscle mass in both men and women in the five decades of life up to 80 years of age (Tzankoff and Norris J Appl Physiol.1977; 43: 1001-1006).

Thankfully, we can take action to help prevent our metabolism from slowing down by following 5 steps.

Seize the areas you can change to help your body burn calories faster! Enjoy being on the path to leanness!



 Deborah is the Health Director for Organic Liaison, has been a Registered Dietitian for over 16 years, counseling clients on nutrition and fitness, and is the author of 200 Superfoods That Will Save Your Life published by McGraw-Hill, Inc. Her mission is to educate Organic Liaison members to achieve optimal wellness through balanced eating and exercise. For more on Deborah - click here.

Order Deborah's book, 200 Superfoods That Will Save Your Life.
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