Your Complete Guide to Revving Up Your Metabolism Forever
“Youth is wasted on the young”
George Bernard Shaw
Remember when you were 20 and you could literally eat and drink pretty much anything you wanted? Man…. those were the days! You didn’t need to worry about having that extra slice of pizza, or if you had to regularly go to the gym. You looked at the mirror and you had a great body - without evening trying!
However, things have started to change. Now, in your late 20’s, 30’s or 40’s, you look at the mirror and wonder, “where the hell is that gut come from?” Sadly, this is a more common experience than necessary. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that something happens as we get older, even though you seemingly were doing all the right things, your body/metabolism still slowed down.
Here’s three reason why:
You become less active
Unfortunately, this has become a “natural” aspect within our society. As you get older, you become busier with work, family, and other responsibilities. If you work a desk job, then you’re sitting down more and walking less than you did in high school/college.
As a result, your physical activities become less of a priority. In fact, the average american sits for 13+ hours daily, which is an astonishing 91 hours per week or roughly 50% of your week!
You eat fewer calories and eat at the wrong times
While common sense would make us think eating less would help prevent weight gain, it actually slows down our metabolism. Our metabolism is highly sensitive to both physical activity and the types of foods we eat. Therefore, it’s essential to focu on food quality and the types of foods we eat to keep our metabolism running smoothly.
You’re losing lean body mass
With the 1-2-3 punch combo of less physical activity, eating less calories, and more daily stress, your muscles will atrophy. Without the necessary stimulus, your lean physique slowly disappears and your metabolism slowly turns sloth-like. In addition, all those hours of sitting leads to a host of muscular problems that can leave your body damaged over time (click here to learn more.)
Now that we have covered why your metabolism slows down, let’s take a deep dive into what and exactly how your metabolism works so we can have it running at full speed.
So, what exactly is your metabolism?
So what exactly is your metabolism and why is it important? Well, most people think of their metabolism as their body’s ability to burn fat or calories. While that is true to a certain degree, yet your metabolism is so much more than calories in vs calories.
Metabolism is scientifically defined as “the chemical processes inside living cells that are necessary for the maintenance of life.”
In normal english, your metabolism emcompassess all the chemical reactions your body does in order to simply function and operate, to grow and rebuild our muscles and body, and to survive. In short, when your metabolism is out of whack, your body doesn’t operate optimally and inhibits your body to properly function.
Simply put, your metabolism emcompasses all the chemical reactions your body does in order to simply function, to grow our muscles, to rebuild your body and muscles, and to survive. When your metabolism is out of whack, it will inhibit your body to properly function.
While this may seem a bit overwhelming, your metabolism can actually be broken down into four key components.
The Four Components of Metabolism
When most people think of metabolism they usually think of it has the body’s ability to burn body fat or calories. While this is true to a certain degree, your metabolism is soooo much more than burning calories or calories in vs calories out.
Your metabolism allows your body function at maximum capacity for both living a healthy life and performing at your best both within and outside the gym.
Your metabolism is made up of the follow four components:
Basal Metabolism Rate (BMR)
Physical Activity Level
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
Let’s breakdown each and every section in detail:
1) Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is essentially the amount of calories it takes to do all the physiological housekeeping chores within your body to keep it alive. For example, if you literally lay in bed for 24 hours without moving a muscle, this would be the number of calories your body burns to simply exist.
Your body does a lot to keep you running optimally and smoothly. From your organs and bones doing routine remodeling and maintaining their cellular function, it takes a large amount of calories. In fact, your BMR represents the bulk of your total daily calorie burning (roughly 60-70%!). That’s a lot of housekeeping work!
Mack Tip - An extra pound of muscle can burn an additional 10 pounds. This is one of the many reasons why to prioritize strength training within your workout routine.
2) Physical Activity Level (PAL)
This one is pretty obvious. Every time you workout, you burn calories to execute your desired movement. Your physical activity typically constitutes to 15-30 percent of your total calorie expenditure. The amount of calories burned depends on your activity and exercise. The more strenuous the exercise, the more muscles engaged leads to more calories being burned.
3) Thermic Effect of Feeding (TEF)
Every time you chew, sallow, and digest your food, your body needs to expend energy to process. However, not all food is created equal (in terms of revving up your metabolism).
Some foods are more “metabolically expensive” to break down and be digested. By eating the right foods at the right times, this would allow you to maximize your TEF, allowing you to burn additional calories.
Without question, protein is the most “metabolically expensive” macronutrient as it’s TEF is twice as high when compared to carbs and fats. This is one reason why having a higher protein consumption is so strongly recommended.
Here’s the macronutrient breakdown comparison:
Carbohydrates – 5 to 15% of the calories burned during digestion.
Fats – A high end 5 to 15% of the calories burned during digestion.
Protein – 20 to 35% of the calories burned during digestion.
4) Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
When it comes to exercise, we typically think of some form of vigorous exercise that leaves you exhausted. However, not all exercises need to leave you in a drained state to rev up your metabolism, and this is the power of NEAT.
NEAT represents all the calories you burn in your everyday life outside the gym, such as walking. In fact, walking is the most underrated exercise. Most people constantly neglect or completely disrespect walking altogether for not being “challenging” enough.
In fact, walking is the most underrated exercise. Most people are constantly neglecting or dissing walking altogether for not being challenging. While the challenge isn’t in walking, it’s in consistency getting those reps day in day out. This is why I give all my online clients a daily step count goal. This is one way I can ensure all my clients maximize their progress.
Hopefully, you realized that the human body is an amazing, super efficient machine as its ability to micromanage our metabolism, movement, and overall function is damn impressive.
However, there is one thing you need to understand:
“Your Body isn’t wasteful. It will burn fat only when it needs energy!
In order to lose body fat, you need to create a strong enough stimulus to promote that metabolic adaptation. Therefore, to lose that unwanted body fat, you’ll need to create a high energy demand. While your workouts are important and play a critical role in changing your body composition, it’s just one part of the equation.
To achieve the best results possible, you’ll need to manipulate all aspects of your metabolism.
How to Rev up Your Metabolism Forever
As we discussed what exactly your metabolism is, let’s examine how to manipulate these variables for maximum effect. I won’t sugarcoat this: you’ll need to work for it. You’ll need to earn it.
In order to maximize your metabolism, you’ll need to manipulate the following variables:
Nutritional Habits
Resistance Training
Recovery and Sleep
Proper Supplementation
These four elements need to work together in unison to maximize your metabolism. Think of your metabolism as a four legged stool: the seat of the stool (your metabolism) needs all four legs for support to function optimally.
Let’s take a closer look into each variable to rev up your metabolism.
Revving your Metabolism - Nutritional Habits and Eating
It comes as no surprise that you must "watch what you eat" in order to improve your metabolism and body composition.
Unfortunately, "watching what you eat" has become synonymous with deprivation, tedious, and monotony. Most people think they’re doing everything right, yet can’t figure out why they’re not losing body fat. That missing puzzle piece can only be found once you start tracking your nutritional habits and calories.
You don’t have to track your nutrition for the rest of your life, but doing it for at least the first few weeks/months will help you not only pinpoint a few slight changes that could add up to BIG results while improving 99% of your life.
Allow me to explain.
Unfortunately, the average human lifespan is 79 years. If you want to live well into your 80’s and 90’s, you’ll need to start making smarter decisions NOW. How can you make smarter decisions?
You’ll need to spend some time learning proper nutrition which I mean controlling your calorie, knowing what foods are ideal sources of protein, fats, carbs AND eating the foods you enjoy while staying consistent with your nutritional approach!
Learning proper nutrition takes time and depends on how much you commit to learning , yet I’ve found that most people need around 9 months to fully integrate and consistently apply what they learn. So if you spend 9 months committing to your nutrition, that means you’ll spend 1% of your life to improve 99% of it.
Nine months seems scary to a lot of people, because it’s such a big commitment. However, here’s the deal - You’ll get 10x more from committing to a longer timeframe than you would be running 4-8 week fat loss challenges.
To maximize your progress: actively practice these nutritional principles:
1) Total Calorie Intake
Even though everyone knows this, not everyone wants to believe it. This is known as the energy balance equation, also known as calorie in, calories out. This equation looks like this:
(Energy in)- (Energy out) = Changes in Body Composition
This energy balance equation comes from the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred from one state to another.” Humans cannot create energy out of thin air. We get our energy from the food we eat and the excess energy doesn’t magically disappear either. It is simply stored as body fat.
In other words,
In order to lose weight you need to be in a caloric deficit, period. To be in a caloric deficit, you need to take in less energy (i.e. food) than you burn.
In order to gain weight, you need to be in a caloric surplus. To be in a caloric surplus, you need to take in more energy (i.e. food) than you burn.
In order to maintain your current weight, your energy in and energy out must be equal.
If you want to gain or lose body mass, you’ll need to consider your overall energy balance and how to shift it in your favor. The easiest way to shift it in your favor is to actively track your macros for a few weeks to ensure you’re in the correct energy balance. This builds nutritional awareness and education.
To quote one of my mentors Jordan Syatt, from Syatt Fitness,
“You don’t have to count your calories, yet your calories count.”
2) Adequate Protein Intake
At Mack Performance, protein is the staple in our nutrition plan. Debately, it may be the most important macronutrient. The reason is simple – it is an essential macronutrient, which means you literally cannot survive without consuming it.
Protein is what helps us rebuild muscle tissues and keep our bodies systems (Muscles, nervous, and immunity) running optimally. We need protein for enzymes in our body, skin, and hair growth and many hormones like adrenaline, testosterone, and growth hormones.
Your body needs protein and when it comes to changing your body composition, your body needs protein and here’s the big reasons why:
Protein rebuilds muscle tissue which allows us to train hard again, and allows us to recover quicker allowing us to build more muscle. The more muscle we build, the more fat our body will burn.
Protein has a very high Thermic Effect of Food (TEF), which means it takes more calories to digest it. This means if you had 100 grams of protein, then your body will burn 30 calories simply by breaking the protein down into usable amino acids.
In fact, protein has the highest TEF of all the macros.
Protein - 20-30% of calories consumed are burned via TEF
Carbs - 5-10% consumed are burned via TEF
Fat - 0-3% of calories consumed are burned via TEF
3. Protein is extremely hard to store as body fat. Here's the proof. This 2015 study took 48 randomized, resistance trained men and women and hard them either
Consume a minimum of 1.36g/lb of protein daily
Maintain current dietary habits for eight weeks while undergoing a standardized resistance training program designed to increase lean body mass.
From the Study: “Compared to the control group, the high protein group consumed significantly more calories (+490 calories) and protein (3.4 vs 2.3 g/kg) From primarily whey protein shakes, leading to a diet that was 39%, 27% fat, and 34% carbohydrates. Both groups significantly increased FFM (muscle mass) and significantly reduced FM (Body fat) compared to baseline, but the reduction in FM (Body fat) was significantly greater in the high protein group compared to the control group (-1.6 vs. -0.3kg). According, body weight gain was also significantly less in the high protein group compared to the control group.”
In summary, the high protein group ate ~490 calories more than the lower protein group and lost more fat!
3) Micronutrients
Micronutrients is scientifically defined as “a chemical element or substance in trace amounts for the normal growth and development of living organisms.”
In non-greek terms, micronutrients are your vitamins and minerals, which are needed in order to survive as a human organism, such as having healthy organs, skin, hair, nails, eye sight, and have healthy tendons and ligaments. In short, micros are pretty damn important!
In fact, if you fill 80-90% of your dietary plan with whole foods, you would sufficiently support your body with enough micronutrients and will actually rarely need any supplementals.
However, there’s a few things we need to make sure you understand in order to achieve that:
Minerals:
There are two types of minerals that we consume on a regular basis; these are included within macronutrients (which our bodies needs in bigger doses), and trace minerals (which our bodies need in smaller doses
Examples of macronutrients minerals include potassium, calcium, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. Most of these are electrolytes, which are directly linked to our fluid intake. If we don’t have a balance of these minerals, then hydration, recovery, and performance can be problematic.
The trace minerals include iron, copper, iodine, selenium, and zinc (there are more, but these are the key ones to remember). Even though they are needed in smaller quantities, they are equally as important.
Vitamins:
Vitamins come into two different types, just like minerals, yet it’s related to how they’re absorbed and utilized in the body. We have fat soluble and water soluble.
Fat Soluble vitamins are absorbed and utilized with the assistance of fat and tend to stay in the body longer than water-soluble vitamins. These include vitamin A,D,E, and K.
Water Soluble vitamins are (as you probably guessed), absorbed with the assistance of water. These include Vitamin B (all 8 forms), and Vitamin C.
There are some micronutrients that are commonly low in athletes, bodybuilders, and highly physical active individuals. Here are the micronutrients and negative implications of being deficient.
Zinc: Deficiency can lead to negative metabolism impacts
Iron: Deficiency can lead to a negative strength impact
Calcium: Deficiency can lead to a negative bone health impact
Omega 3’s: Deficiency can lead to a negative hormonal , neurological, and joint health
Vit D: Deficiency can lead to a negative hormonal impact
Magnesium: Deficiency can lead to a negative nervous system and muscle recovery, hydration, and more.
To close out this section on micronutrients, here’s a table to neatly summarize everything to ensure you have all your bases covered.
2) Revving your Metabolism - Resistance Training
In order to maximize your metabolism, you'll need to focus on developing muscle. The reason is simple; Muscle tissue is more metabolically active than adipose aka body fat. The more lean body mass you possess, the better your metabolism will function and by extensive your overall health.
The best way to develop more lean body mass is through lifting weights as your body needs a strong enough stimulus to create additional muscle mass. Not only would you increase your lean body mass, but you’ll be increasing your strength and metabolism.
Sounds like the ultimate win-win situation to me!
While there are many key training components to consider within your training program adhering to progressive overload is the most important strength training principle. It’s one of the oldest, most research-grounded, and well established training principles.
Simply put, progressive overload is training hard enough to warrant adaptations. You need to challenge your body to disrupt your body's homeostasis. This will cause a cascade of events that will elicit improvements in muscular size and strength. Your metabolism will ramp up to repair the muscle tissues, eliciting improvements in both muscular strength and size. This process is known as the "afterburn." This will leave your metabolism jacked for hours post workout.
To capitalize on the afterburn effect, you'll need to focus on compound exercises over isolation exercises. Compound exercises (i.e. deadlift, squats, bench press, overhead press, etc.) are any exercises using two or more different joints to stimulate different muscle groups. By using multiple muscle groups, this will allow you to build both a powerful physique and metabolism.
While I could talk about day about the benefits of compound lifts over isolation work, here’s a few benefits I want to highlight:
1) Better for Overall Progress:
It doesn’t matter if your goal is to build your physique, getting stronger, or just being healthier, compound lifts are necessary within your program. Your body, metabolism, and overall progress will skyrocket with a heavy set of 5 rep squats rather than doing a 100 rep glute kickback.
2) Time Efficient:
We are more busy than ever. You cannot afford to spend 2 hours in the gym. Hell, it’s probably hard enough to sneak in a 45 minute workout! I get that. By focusing on compound lifts, this will allow your workouts to be time efficient so you can get in, get out and enjoy the rest of your day.
3) More Effective than Isolation Exercises:
Deadlifts and squats utilizes 200+ muscles in your body to perform. By engaging more muscles, this will lead to better gains, progress, and maximizing the afterburn effect. While there is definitely a time and place for isolation work, the majority of your workout should consist of compound exercises.
Due to the amount of muscles being used, it’s best to do the majority of your lifts between 3-15 reps. By staying within this range, you’ll build both strength and muscle to get that powerful, lean physique you've been craving.
Metabolism Boosting Training Principles
When it comes to your workouts, you want the workouts to rev up your metabolism so you can continue burning calories all day long. No matter how much you currently exercise, the following exercise plan can take you from a sluggish metabolism to a speedy one. I won’t sugarcoat this; in order to speed up your metabolism in a more permanent way, you’ll need to spend a significant amount of time within the gym.
You must do the following:
1) Exercise for at least 5 hours a week
According to research from the University of Wyoming, it takes at least 5 hours a week to see real body composition results. Due to this, you’ll need an exercise plan that includes six weekly 45-ish minute workouts. Now, this may seem like alot, but did you know the average American watches about 28 hours of TV per week?
Truth of the matter is, everyone has the time to make it happen. Finding time to exercise is a matter of mindset and priorities. If you truly want to lose fat, gain muscle, and boost your metabolism, then you’ll need to commit yourself to your goal, put your workouts on the calendar, and make them a nonnegotiable.
2) Make Each Workout Count
Time is a precious asset that we can never get back. So, in order to maximize your progress, you’ll need to focus on intense strength training and cardio sessions. You want to feel stimulated, not annihilate after each workout. If your workouts are leaving your body beaten up, chances are you’re not going to last very long and greatly increase your risk of getting injured.
3) Change your program every 4-6 weeks
No matter how intense your workouts are, your body will eventually adapt to those stresses and your results with plateau. As with any other stresses (work, relationships,etc.) the body will adapt to all demands placed on top. Therefore, to prevent your body from adapting too well to your training, your training plan must change every 4-6 weeks.
4) Give Your Body Time to Recover
Recovery/sleep is the often forgotten component of sleep. We spend so much time and energy focusing on what exercises to do, and what to eat that we completely overlook sleep. In order to build a faster metabolism, you’ll need bigger muscles. To get bigger muscles, you’ll need to be able to fully recover between sessions.
It’s during the recovery phases that your muscles restock their fuel stores, repairs and rebuilds the muscle tissues. If you overstress your muscles, you’ll actually hinder progress and slow your metabolism.
Speaking of recovering from your workouts and getting of plenty of sleep…..
3) Revving your Metabolism - Recovery and Sleep
Did you know, as many as 30% of adults sleep fewer than six hours per night, which is the minimum amount of necessary sleep. Sleep is a necessity for life as it has a huge impact on your quality of life. Just as we need food, water,and exercise, we need sleep to survive.
Poor sleep quality can have a huge effect on your life by negatively impacting your workouts, recovery, sex life, mood, dietary decisions, and can lead to potential health problems (think obesity and hypertension).
In fact, we get our muscular gains while sleeping. So, by not getting enough restful sleep, you are inhibiting the body’s ability to rebuild and restore your muscles.
But don’t just take my word for it. This is backed by science.
In fact, there was a recent 8-week study done that focused on the effects of sleep restriction on weight loss when in a calorie deficit. There were 36 people in the study and got their baseline body compositions (muscle and fat mass) tested in week 1. 15 of the people (Group A) simply used a calorie deficit for the 8 weeks.
The remaining 21 individuals (Group B) used a calorie deficit combined with sleep restriction for the 8 week period. They were instructed to reduce their time in bed Monday-Friday and cold sleep as much as they wanted on the weekends (to “catch up” on their sleep). This was an average of 169 minutes less sleep for the entire week.
The results: Group 2 loses an average of 39% of their total weight lost as muscle mass and 58% as fat mass. When sleep was not restricted, Group A only lost 17% of their weight as muscle mass, but 87% as fat mass. That means both groups lost the same amount of total weight, but the group with more sleep lost more fat and less muscle!
Still not convinced?
In 2010, there was a randomized crossover study of 10 untrained people who moderately restricted calories for 14 days. They did this 14 day study twice and compared the effects of different sleep times.
For the first two weeks, they slept for an average 5 hours and 14 minutes while getting their hormones and body composition measured in the lab. This was followed by a 3 month period where their hormones and body composition was monitored, but didn’t analyze their sleep. Then, they had a second period of 14 days, but this time they slept for an average of 7 hours and 25 minutes (still getting tested for hormones and body composition).
The results: During both periods, they lost about 6.5lbs. But when they slept for ~5 hours per night, they lost 80% of their weight from muscle mass and 20% from fat! To add, they also had an increase in hunger throughout the day. Compared to when they slept ~7.5 hours per night, they lost 52% of their weight from muscle and 48% from fat.
What these studies mean:
These two studies show that your sleep may be even more important than diet when it comes to gaining muscle and losing fat. When you sleep is poor, you’ll still lose weight with a calorie deficit, but you lose more muscle mass and less fat when compared to those who get better sleep.
Poor Sleep = Less muscle and more fat
Make this your rule moving forward- always aim for 7-9 hours of sleep each and every night. Only not will this keep your metabolism running optimally by fully recovering from your workouts, it will help you keep your hard earned muscle while losing that body fat.
4) Revving your Metabolism - Proper Supplementation
Before going any further, I want to quickly define what supplements exactly are and their role.
“Supplementation - something that completes or enhances something else when added to it.”
However, the major key to look at here is where it says “enhances something else” This is the major key because by definition, supplements are only here to help us improve the fundamentals.
The truth is you don’t need to take supplements, unless you need to fill the missing gap within your nutrition. If you are consistently nailing your caloric, macro, and micro intake, then you don't need supplements. However, the majority of us do need help in one of those areas, so having the proper supplements will help.
You want to ensure your nutrition, strength training, and supplements to work as a harmonized unit to produce the fastest, healthiest, and most impressive results.
Quality and Purity
Before we can get into what supplements actually work and which are worth investing in, we need to touch upon the fact that it can be unfortunately easy to make and get supplements approved. Due to this, you’ll need to do your research to ensure you are getting a quality product.
There are four things to check out before purchasing:
USP Label
Most general vitamins and supplements may be verified from lab studies and if they have, they should have a USP label on the bottle. This is a simple and easy way to ensure the supplement is not only legit, but it also truly contains what it claims to contain.
Labdoor.com
This is a free website that you can visit and verify if your supplement product is legit. In addition, this gives you a way to research what you’re about to purchase and see what’s actually inside the bottle, so you can make the right decision.
Brand New and Unknown Products
As a general rule, you should always be cautious when a new supplement product reaches the market. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to get into the supplement industry and because of that, you should be cautious. Therefore, my suggestion is to trust the brands and products that have stood the test of time.
Make sure you understand what the supplement is
There’s so many people giving advice out there who just do not know enough of the science to truly be providing that advice, so always make sure you know the whats, the whys, and how’s before purchasing. Check out Examine.com and do your research. They have everything you’ll need to know.
Effectiveness and Recommendations
Something to touch upon quickly, is the actual effectiveness and results seen when taking supplements. Most supplements, ones that truly have benefits and are worth the investment, take patience and consistency. After weeks and weeks of taking them, you should be performing better, recover faster, getting bigger, losing more body fat, or becoming healthier.
The following recommended supplements are ones I've either personally taken,or suggest my clients to take. Simply put, these supplements have repeatedly shown to offer benefits to improving body composition, performance, and health.
You’ll notice that list is small but that’s with good reason - we don’t need supplements. With that being said, they can enhance or improve the results we see by adding to our already sound nutrition plan.
1) Fish Oil Capsules
Fish oil supplements have been shown to have powerful antioxidant, ant-cancer, anti-inflammatory and anti-heart disease properties. Fish oils increase levels of important enzymes that boost the calorie burning ability of your metabolism.
In addition, fish oils has the following benefits:
Reduced risk of diabetes
Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke
Reduced total body inflammation (joint, brain, gut,etc)
Enhance mood
Improve muscle protein synthesis response
Recommended: Nature Bounty Fish Oil
2) Protein Supplements
Proteins have repeatedly emerged as the true superstar of boosting your metabolism when compared to carbs and fats. Due to their status, I strongly recommend you consistently nail your protein intake.
Just to be clear - protein powder is neither magical muscle builders nor superior to whole foods, but it can help hit your daily total intake, especially when you are on the go.
Protein powder is easily absorbable, quick, and convenient, is relatively low in calories because it’s pure protein in most cases, and it can save you when you're struggling to reach your protein intake day to day.
However, not all protein supplements are equal. Always check the label. Make sure your protein supplement contains 20-25g of protein, <4g of fats and carbohydrates. Once you find a supplement that fit these standards (and you enjoy drinking), go ahead and use it!
Recommended: Dynamize Casein Protein and Gold Standard Whey Protein
3) Green Supplements
In order to maximize your metabolism, you’ll need to eat adequate amounts of protein and veggies. In fact, for best results, you want to eat 10 servings of fruits and veggies throughout the week. Quick question for you: Does that sound daunting or impossible??
Unless you are a professional chef or have an excessive amount of time, you probably don't have sufficient time to cook and prep your veggies. This is why I recommended green supplements. This will allow you to fill in the dietary gaps to meet your micronutrient, and fruits/veggies goals.
Similar to protein supplements, whole food sources will always be preferred over supplements. I don't want you to get into the bad habit of just replying on green supplements. This is why I strongly recommended taking your green supplement in conjunction with real foods.
Recommended: Athletic Greens
4) Creatine Monohydrate
Creatine has received some bad rap in the past. However, Creatine is produced in our body and is naturally occuring in the foods we eat (mainly red meats).
Creatine will help hydrate and replenish the muscle, making it recover a bit more optimally and faster. By extension, this will help us to perform better. Getting creatine in your body up can help benefit your strength, force and power production, ability to recover, and essentially your ability to build more muscle.
Recommended: Biotest Creatine
Putting it all Together
By now, you’ll hopefully understand what and how your metabolism actually works and burns calories. I completely understand that there’s a TON of information here. However, if you only come away with one major takeaway, make sure it’s this:
Your body is not wasteful.
It will burn fat only when it needs energy!
Your body is an incredibly self-sufficient machine balancing multiple factors. You want to lose weight easily and efficiently? Simply create a high energy need within your body each and everyday by being more physically active or make better food decisions! You need to find an activity or exercise routine that YOU enjoy doing!
I know that I’ve been dropping a ton of information, so I want to quickly summarize everything you can easily put this into action. In order to rev up your metabolism, you’ll need to do the following:
Prioritizing Strength training 3-4 time per week
Do some cardio 1-2 times per week
Prioritize minimally processed, whole food products
Keep total calories in check while eating plenty of protein
Eat plenty of fruits and veggies to get your vitamins and minerals
Walk 10K steps daily
Get 7-9 hours of sleep each night
Use supplements only if you are lacking
Far too often, people try to get along without fully incorporating all these elements. They exercise without changing their diet. They take supplements without working out. They eat less and do nothing else. The problem with all these tactics is they take you into a frustrating circle back to where you started!
Your metabolism is all about your health and how you live. By improving your metabolism, and (by extension your life) it requires having an intelligent plan of action to achieve your results. I won’t sugar coat this; it does require some hard work and effort on your part. However, your friends, family, co-workers, and everyone else will notice how much stronger and leaner you’ll become. You’ll notice how how you have Energizer Bunny levels of energy. You’ll actually enjoy going into the gym while knowing you’re making progress while getting stronger.
However, is it better than constantly wondering… what if? Or wasting your precious time?
Allow me to take the confusion out of the equation to provide the simplicity you need to take the necessary action. Remember, brilliance lies in simplicity, but you still need a highly effective, simple to act upon gameplan.
The most important part of any successful fitness program isn’t the perfect training plan, or golden macro ratio...it’s YOU.
You get a 100% personalized training and nutrition plan each month. On top of that, each month’s plan will be customized based on your feedback, progress, and results to ensure optimal results every phase of your program.
With my online coaching program, you get:
- A customized training plan based on your experience, goals, abilities, and more. Your plan will be designed to not only take advantage of your current training experience, but also teach you new things, all while helping reach your goal.
- You’ll have all of this available at the touch of a button with the Trainerize Training App. All you have to do is pull up your phone, open the Trainerize app, and execute the program. No more wondering, “what should I do today”...it’s all there.
- A personalized nutrition plan. In terms of diet, I’ll create a customized nutrition plan that will be tailored to your busy lifestyle so you can achieve your fitness goals and maintain for the long term. We will focus on a holistic approach to help you build muscle, lose body fat, and have more energy.