10 Powerful Ways Women Can Increase Metabolism to Lose Fat Fast
I’m fascinated by our metabolism and hormones, which is great for YOU, because when you’re fat loss strategy is centered around these 2 things, you’re probably going to succeed.
The problem is most women want to lose weight to get healthy, instead of getting healthy to lose weight.
A healthy body will help you get rid of all of the unwanted weight you want. A stressed out, lethargic, sluggish body will only allow you to survive.
We don’t want to survive, we want to THRIVE.
This post will shed some light on what it takes to speed your metabolism. The good news is, if you’re following my program, you’re probably already doing MOST of these!
10 POWERFUL WAYS WOMEN CAN INCREASE METABOLISM TO LOSE FAT FAST
1.) Build Lean Muscle
Muscle burns fat. Muscle burns fat. Muscle burns fat. Nothing else. Which is why we workout the way we do. To BUILD lean muscle. NOT bulky muscle, but lean, attractive, toned muscles. Which is why you MIGHT experience SOME weight gain the first week or 2 when starting a metabolic resistance training program. This is totally normal, in fact, expected.
Since you can’t get rid of fat in a week or two (it took time to put it on, it’s going to take time to take it off), you’re muscle will actually push your fat OUT, which may make you feel like your clothes are tighter, BUT this is part of the process.
During the muscle building phase you’ll lose water weight, but gain muscle weight, BUT you’ll also BOOST your metabolism. After the necessary muscle-building phase (1-3 weeks, usually 2) this is when the FAT (not just weight) will start melting off.
FACT: Your body burns more calories maintaining muscle than it does maintaining fat.
FACT: The more lean muscle you build, the more calories your body will naturally burn throughout the day.
FACT: Which means that building muscle DOES increase your metabolism.
BOTTOM LINE: Building lean muscle burns more fat.
2.) Eat More Calories
Believe it or not, MOST women eat too few calories, causing them to go into metabolic starvation mode, which eventually slows their basal metabolic rate, the LAST thing you want to do.
For fat loss, we don’t ever want to go under 1500 calories and to be honest to get healthy, you’re probably going to be closer to 1800, but eating less on low-activity days.
Instead of FORCING yourself to eat more calories or obsessing about calories in general, just focus on improving your food quality and adding some of the foods on the grocery list and on #6 here.
Sure, to lose weight you technically need to be in a “calorie deficit” , but if you aren’t eating enough high quality nutrients and minerals that allow your metabolism to function at a high level, you could end up never being in a calorie deficit even eating 800 calories.
The goal should always be to address your food quality and balancing your macronutrient ratios, which will naturally increase your calories and your metabolism.
3.) Balance Your Snacks
Just like you should be balancing your main meals with a protein, a carb, and a fat, balancing your snacks will help keep your blood sugar stable, your hormones balanced, AND your metabolism ignited.
For example, you’ll want to combine a protein with a carb. Like a hard-boiled egg and a piece of fruit. Or a piece of cheese and a piece of fruit. Hummus and vegetables or even potato chips (baked in olive or coconut oil). Beef jerky and coconut water.
You get the picture.
Snacking can make or break your fat-burning and metabolism efforts if you aren’t doing what I call “strategically snacking.”
To strategically snack, you need to first make the choice to balance your snacks, then you need to decide to plan and prepare your snacks ahead of time so you don’t get caught in a situation where you either aren’t snacking at all (or eating enough calories) or you choose immediate gratification over long-term health.
4.) Drink More Coconut Water
Speaking of coconut water! This is one of the best pre-workout “foods” you can consume. You get an immediate energy surge from the healthy natural sugars, electrolytes to replenish you, and much needed calories to sustain a healthy metabolism.
When you get a few minutes you can read my article here: https://upgradedhealth.net/the-5-most-important-health-benefits-of-coconut-water/ for more reasons to drink coconut water.
If you’re hesitant to try coconut water or don’t think your kids will like it, find the flavored coconut water varieties, but avoid the coconut water from concentrate.
Most of all stay far away from Gatorade, Vitamin Water, or other processed sugary imposters.
5.) Avoid These 3 Inflammatory Foods
Gluten/wheat, unsaturated vegetable oils, and HFCS/Sugar are the 3 biggest contributors to a slow metabolism in our society. So the obvious way to BOOST our metabolism, is to avoid foods that overload our livers, slow our thyroid function, and destroy our digestive tract, right?
Substitute your bread with gluten-free bread (or no bread), your tortillas with corn tortillas, your canola oils with coconut oil, and your sugar with honey or stevia.
Read your labels. Oils, flour, and HFCS are in EVERYTHING these days.
Remember this: If you are in a state of inflammation, your body will NOT help you boost your metabolism or lose excess fat.
Get out of inflammation by avoiding inflammatory foods.
6.) Eat These 3 Thyroid Boosting Foods
Okay, enough doom and gloom foods.
Coconut oil, grass-fed beef, and fruits/vegetables. The one thing all nutrition experts agree on is you need adequate protein and you need to eat your vegetables.
Fruit is like nature’s candy, so if you have a sweet tooth, try a few blueberries first.
And coconut oil is the healthiest/most stable oil on the planet. Meaning it doesn’t oxidize or become rancid, like most other oils. Oxidation is what causes excess free radicals in the body, which are the main cause of accelerated aging.
Grass-fed beef is the best protein source on the planet, providing you with all of the amino acids required to build lean muscle.
Remember this, to get out of inflammation you need to eat anti-inflammatory foods.
7.) Limit Your Carbs On Low Activity Days
The more you exercise, the more carbs you can “afford” to eat. Carbs are FUEL for our bodies, so they give you energy for exercise and your metabolic processes, BUT if you’re inactive say all day Wednesday but decide to eat a gluten-free sandwich for lunch, a bunch of fruit for a snack, then sweet potatoes for dinner, that’s A LOT of carbs for a day that you didn’t exercise.
That eating day should look more like a day that you’re coming to a workout session.
Eat a lower carb day if you’re planning a skipping or have to skip a workout session.
I’m not saying to avoid carbs at all costs or eat all the carbs on workout days, I’m saying carbs are energy.
You need them, but you don’t need a lot of them.
You need less on low-energy days (no exercise) and more on high-energy days (exercise).
8.) Do High-Intensity Interval Training
I’m a huge promoter of short bursts of intense exercise for a relatively short period of time. Remember, intensity varies from individual to individual. In other words, your intensity might be more or less at this given time than another woman you could be comparing yourself to.
First off, you shouldn’t compare yourself to other woman, you should only compare your today with your yesterday. You’re improving in some way, right? Awesome!
Now, don’t let “high intensity” scare you off. If you have 15 minutes you could perform this bodyweight workout video.
Not only is HIIT training the fastest way to drop pounds and inches, but it is the best form of exercise to boost your metabolism, since it keeps your cortisol levels low.
High cortisol levels from exercise like long bouts of cardio have been shown break down muscle tissue, thus slowing your metabolism.
9.) Perfect Your Sleep Rhythms
Sleeping might not have any calories or nutrients, but it can either positively or negatively affect your ability to burn fat. The ideal time to get to sleep is from 10/10:30 and we should be getting 6-7:30 hours of sleep depending on days workload. stress level, etc…
The reality is, when you don’t sleep, you are disrupting your hormones. These hormonal fluctuations range from elevated appetite to low energy levels to increased stress hormones.
If you’re having trouble falling asleep. Try chilling out/meditating for 10 minutes before bed. Try avoiding devices that give off light 30 minutes before bed. Try reading a real book for a few minutes.
Getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night is essential to your metabolic success.
10.) Live By the 80/20 Principle
I mention this A LOT, because it’s important to live and eat in a way that causes the least amount of STRESS. Stress, like sleep is a silent killer or a strong promoter of fat loss.
Elevated stress hormones will halt fat/weight loss completely until there are addressed.
What helps control these hormones? Eating real foods, exercising 3-5 times per week, sleeping well, being happy, and not stressing about much (especially your lifestyle, since you have so much control over it).
This 80/20 Rule isn’t black and white either. One day you might be 90/10, the next 85/15, and then oops you’re on vacation and it’s a 50/50 day. The goal is to have a lot more 80+ days than 70- days.
When you do that, you’ll effortlessly lose weight AND you’ll actually enjoy yourself.
Boosting and increasing your metabolism isn’t all about calories and exercise, your metabolism literally controls your moods, emotions, sex drive, and more…
I’ve discovered that there are at least 7 common foods that most people falsely think are “healthy”, but they actually KILL your metabolism and pack on belly fat.
The problem is most women want to lose weight to get healthy, instead of getting healthy to lose weight.
A healthy body will help you get rid of all of the unwanted weight you want. A stressed out, lethargic, sluggish body will only allow you to survive.
We don’t want to survive, we want to THRIVE.
This post will shed some light on what it takes to speed your metabolism. The good news is, if you’re following my program, you’re probably already doing MOST of these!
10 POWERFUL WAYS WOMEN CAN INCREASE METABOLISM TO LOSE FAT FAST
1.) Build Lean Muscle
Muscle burns fat. Muscle burns fat. Muscle burns fat. Nothing else. Which is why we workout the way we do. To BUILD lean muscle. NOT bulky muscle, but lean, attractive, toned muscles. Which is why you MIGHT experience SOME weight gain the first week or 2 when starting a metabolic resistance training program. This is totally normal, in fact, expected.
Since you can’t get rid of fat in a week or two (it took time to put it on, it’s going to take time to take it off), you’re muscle will actually push your fat OUT, which may make you feel like your clothes are tighter, BUT this is part of the process.
During the muscle building phase you’ll lose water weight, but gain muscle weight, BUT you’ll also BOOST your metabolism. After the necessary muscle-building phase (1-3 weeks, usually 2) this is when the FAT (not just weight) will start melting off.
FACT: Your body burns more calories maintaining muscle than it does maintaining fat.
FACT: The more lean muscle you build, the more calories your body will naturally burn throughout the day.
FACT: Which means that building muscle DOES increase your metabolism.
BOTTOM LINE: Building lean muscle burns more fat.
2.) Eat More Calories
Believe it or not, MOST women eat too few calories, causing them to go into metabolic starvation mode, which eventually slows their basal metabolic rate, the LAST thing you want to do.
For fat loss, we don’t ever want to go under 1500 calories and to be honest to get healthy, you’re probably going to be closer to 1800, but eating less on low-activity days.
Instead of FORCING yourself to eat more calories or obsessing about calories in general, just focus on improving your food quality and adding some of the foods on the grocery list and on #6 here.
Sure, to lose weight you technically need to be in a “calorie deficit” , but if you aren’t eating enough high quality nutrients and minerals that allow your metabolism to function at a high level, you could end up never being in a calorie deficit even eating 800 calories.
The goal should always be to address your food quality and balancing your macronutrient ratios, which will naturally increase your calories and your metabolism.
3.) Balance Your Snacks
Just like you should be balancing your main meals with a protein, a carb, and a fat, balancing your snacks will help keep your blood sugar stable, your hormones balanced, AND your metabolism ignited.
For example, you’ll want to combine a protein with a carb. Like a hard-boiled egg and a piece of fruit. Or a piece of cheese and a piece of fruit. Hummus and vegetables or even potato chips (baked in olive or coconut oil). Beef jerky and coconut water.
You get the picture.
Snacking can make or break your fat-burning and metabolism efforts if you aren’t doing what I call “strategically snacking.”
To strategically snack, you need to first make the choice to balance your snacks, then you need to decide to plan and prepare your snacks ahead of time so you don’t get caught in a situation where you either aren’t snacking at all (or eating enough calories) or you choose immediate gratification over long-term health.
4.) Drink More Coconut Water
Speaking of coconut water! This is one of the best pre-workout “foods” you can consume. You get an immediate energy surge from the healthy natural sugars, electrolytes to replenish you, and much needed calories to sustain a healthy metabolism.
When you get a few minutes you can read my article here: https://upgradedhealth.net/the-5-most-important-health-benefits-of-coconut-water/ for more reasons to drink coconut water.
If you’re hesitant to try coconut water or don’t think your kids will like it, find the flavored coconut water varieties, but avoid the coconut water from concentrate.
Most of all stay far away from Gatorade, Vitamin Water, or other processed sugary imposters.
5.) Avoid These 3 Inflammatory Foods
Gluten/wheat, unsaturated vegetable oils, and HFCS/Sugar are the 3 biggest contributors to a slow metabolism in our society. So the obvious way to BOOST our metabolism, is to avoid foods that overload our livers, slow our thyroid function, and destroy our digestive tract, right?
Substitute your bread with gluten-free bread (or no bread), your tortillas with corn tortillas, your canola oils with coconut oil, and your sugar with honey or stevia.
Read your labels. Oils, flour, and HFCS are in EVERYTHING these days.
Remember this: If you are in a state of inflammation, your body will NOT help you boost your metabolism or lose excess fat.
Get out of inflammation by avoiding inflammatory foods.
6.) Eat These 3 Thyroid Boosting Foods
Okay, enough doom and gloom foods.
Coconut oil, grass-fed beef, and fruits/vegetables. The one thing all nutrition experts agree on is you need adequate protein and you need to eat your vegetables.
Fruit is like nature’s candy, so if you have a sweet tooth, try a few blueberries first.
And coconut oil is the healthiest/most stable oil on the planet. Meaning it doesn’t oxidize or become rancid, like most other oils. Oxidation is what causes excess free radicals in the body, which are the main cause of accelerated aging.
Grass-fed beef is the best protein source on the planet, providing you with all of the amino acids required to build lean muscle.
Remember this, to get out of inflammation you need to eat anti-inflammatory foods.
7.) Limit Your Carbs On Low Activity Days
The more you exercise, the more carbs you can “afford” to eat. Carbs are FUEL for our bodies, so they give you energy for exercise and your metabolic processes, BUT if you’re inactive say all day Wednesday but decide to eat a gluten-free sandwich for lunch, a bunch of fruit for a snack, then sweet potatoes for dinner, that’s A LOT of carbs for a day that you didn’t exercise.
That eating day should look more like a day that you’re coming to a workout session.
Eat a lower carb day if you’re planning a skipping or have to skip a workout session.
I’m not saying to avoid carbs at all costs or eat all the carbs on workout days, I’m saying carbs are energy.
You need them, but you don’t need a lot of them.
You need less on low-energy days (no exercise) and more on high-energy days (exercise).
8.) Do High-Intensity Interval Training
I’m a huge promoter of short bursts of intense exercise for a relatively short period of time. Remember, intensity varies from individual to individual. In other words, your intensity might be more or less at this given time than another woman you could be comparing yourself to.
First off, you shouldn’t compare yourself to other woman, you should only compare your today with your yesterday. You’re improving in some way, right? Awesome!
Now, don’t let “high intensity” scare you off. If you have 15 minutes you could perform this bodyweight workout video.
Not only is HIIT training the fastest way to drop pounds and inches, but it is the best form of exercise to boost your metabolism, since it keeps your cortisol levels low.
High cortisol levels from exercise like long bouts of cardio have been shown break down muscle tissue, thus slowing your metabolism.
9.) Perfect Your Sleep Rhythms
Sleeping might not have any calories or nutrients, but it can either positively or negatively affect your ability to burn fat. The ideal time to get to sleep is from 10/10:30 and we should be getting 6-7:30 hours of sleep depending on days workload. stress level, etc…
The reality is, when you don’t sleep, you are disrupting your hormones. These hormonal fluctuations range from elevated appetite to low energy levels to increased stress hormones.
If you’re having trouble falling asleep. Try chilling out/meditating for 10 minutes before bed. Try avoiding devices that give off light 30 minutes before bed. Try reading a real book for a few minutes.
Getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night is essential to your metabolic success.
10.) Live By the 80/20 Principle
I mention this A LOT, because it’s important to live and eat in a way that causes the least amount of STRESS. Stress, like sleep is a silent killer or a strong promoter of fat loss.
Elevated stress hormones will halt fat/weight loss completely until there are addressed.
What helps control these hormones? Eating real foods, exercising 3-5 times per week, sleeping well, being happy, and not stressing about much (especially your lifestyle, since you have so much control over it).
This 80/20 Rule isn’t black and white either. One day you might be 90/10, the next 85/15, and then oops you’re on vacation and it’s a 50/50 day. The goal is to have a lot more 80+ days than 70- days.
When you do that, you’ll effortlessly lose weight AND you’ll actually enjoy yourself.
Boosting and increasing your metabolism isn’t all about calories and exercise, your metabolism literally controls your moods, emotions, sex drive, and more…
I’ve discovered that there are at least 7 common foods that most people falsely think are “healthy”, but they actually KILL your metabolism and pack on belly fat.
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