There are literally dozens, maybe even hundreds, of different legit ways to lose weight or burn excess calories. Mainly, because not every body type is the same or reacts to the same type of physical stimulation that prompts weight loss. But once you find the right diet or workout regimen, losing weight becomes rather straightforward. The biggest issue after losing that weight is keeping it off. This is where knowing about and increasing your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) becomes top priority.
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What exactly is BMR?
If you laid on the couch all day watching Netflix and not moving a muscle then BMR would be how many calories you burned doing nothing all day. Another definition is BMR measures how many calories you burn at rest.Even though you are not active, your body needs to continually burn calories for energy in order to keep your body functioning and alive (i.e. your cardiovascular system and your central nervous system).
Not everyone will have the dame BMR and our BMR is subjective to your:
• Lean body massYour basal metabolic rate accounts for about 70 percent of the calories you burn every day. Leaving ~10% of your calories burned from lean body mass and the other ~20 % through physical activity.
• Age
• Gender
• Genetic factors
• Body composition
For those who have lost weight and want to keep it off, increasing your basal metabolic rate will allow you to eat more without gaining weight
How to Calculate BMR
You can use the BMR Calculator over at BodyBuilding.com or BMI-Calculator.How to increase BMR?
Increase your muscle mass – BMR is higher in people with more muscle mass. The more muscle mass you have the more your body will burn calories, even at rest. Every 1 pound of LEAN muscle, burns ~ 50 calories a day while at rest.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – To get the most out of your body and have it yearning for energy (calories), try to work out using the HIIT method. Meaning to workout with little rest in between sets. For example 30 second on and 30 second rest, Tabata (20 secs on, 10 sec rests), sprints (20 second sprints, 20 secs rest), etc. Doing high intensity interval training will burn calories at a faster rate and has a synergistic effect on increasing your BMR.
Eat Breakfast – If you approach the day without eating, your body may sense starvation and slow down to conserve energy so don’t ever try to starve yourself. And if you are trying to put on body mass, then have a high protein breakfast each morning.
Eat more protein – A study on normal weight, non-smoking female volunteers aged 19-22 year olds was done 2002 in order to find out if high-protein, low-fat diets promote a greater degree of weight loss compared to high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets. The study concluded claiming data indicated an added energy-cost associated with high-protein, low-fat diets which may help explain the efficacy of such diets for weight loss.
What does that mean? According to the study, high protein diets caused the body’s temperature to rise slightly higher and burn a slightly higher amount of calories versus the test group.
With protein, it is important to also take into account the thermogenic effect of food (TEF). TEF is the measure of energy the body needs in order to digest food. Your body will burn between 20-25% of calories during digestion just to break down protein. To put that in perspective, if you ate 250 calories worth of protein, then through digestion alone you will be burning between 50-62 calories because of the thermal effect of food. While with carbohydrates (5-15%) and fats (2-5%) these numbers will be much lower.
Metabolic boosters – Green tea and chili peppers are just a few to name. To see others check out Triggers to burning fat for more info.
Stay away from too much cardio – Too much cardio can make your body go into a catabolic state. Essentially having your body become resourceful and start breaking down/eating away at your muscles in order to maintain more important functions of the body
Cold Thermogenesis – Sip on ice cold water throughout the day to give your metabolism a slight kick. When you drink ice cold water, your body needs to burn excess calories to heat itself up.With the information that you now have in your grasp, I hope you can become better skilled in losing and/or keeping unwanted weight off. See you all next Wednesday, Happy Lifting!
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