If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media, you’ve probably come across a plethora of content touting metabolism boosting “hacks”: drinking cold water, green tea, and coffee; eating smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day; making your food as spicy as possible; cold plunging in ice water; wearing a weighted vest. 

What’s worth implementing? What’s simply noise? 

While all of the above mentioned practices may have a small, short term effect on metabolic rate, there are better areas for us to focus on when it comes to supporting a more robust metabolism big picture.

HOW TO ACTUALLY SUPPORT YOUR METABOLISM

GET MORE MOVEMENT IN THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Our total daily energy expenditure is made up of four components: 

• Our basal metabolic rate (i.e. how much energy it takes to support bodily functions at rest)

• The thermic effect of the food we eat (e.g. how much energy is expended during digestion and absorption)

• Exercise energy expenditure (purposeful movement that aids in improving our fitness status)

• Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT (all other movement). 

The latter two components combined make up roughly 30 percent of our TDEE, which is significant! Making time for fitness promoting activity most days, as well as finding ways to stay moving the rest of our waking hours, can make the difference of hundreds of calories expended. Yes, our exercise is important, but so is movement outside of structured exercise!

EAT A PROTEIN-RICH DIET THAT EMPHASIZES MICRONUTRIENT DENSE WHOLE FOODS

The thermic effect of food (TEF) can vary greatly depending on the nature of the foods that we’re eating: the more processed the food, the easier it is to ingest and digest, thus not being especially energy costly. One study performed on subjects concluded that a grilled cheese sandwich composed of white bread and cheese product had a TEF of nearly half (~75 calories) that of one with the same macronutrient profile that was comprised of multigrain (containing whole sunflower seeds and whole grain kernels) and cheddar cheese (~140 calories) when metabolic rate was monitored over the course of 6 hours (PMID = 20613890). Additionally, macronutrient composition over the course of the day matters as well. Protein has been shown to have the most robust TEF of all three macronutrients, which is a key reason why consuming a diet high in it can lead to favorable body composition changes. More protein and more micronutrient dense foods means staying full longer and burning more calories (keeping an active metabolism!) while doing so.

INCREASE MUSCLE MASS (AND BE OK WITH POTENTIALLY WEIGHING MORE BECAUSE OF IT)

Simply put, a body that weighs more is a body that is more energy costly to keep running, both at rest and in motion. Building lean tissue is advisable for overall health and longevity (and no doubt has aesthetic appeal as well), yet in terms of the impacts on BMR, they can be pretty negligible: one pound of muscle burns about 5 calories per day; one pound of fat burns about 2. However, moving a more muscular body through space will have a more significant energy demand due to the body requiring more energy to support the increased rate of those muscles contracting. Increasing muscle mass doesn’t just increase our strength and have positive body composition changes, but it increases our metabolic output as well.

SPEND TIME EATING AT OR ABOVE MAINTENANCE.

When we’re constantly trying to lose weight, we can experience prolonged metabolic downregulation, meaning our TDEE is decreased in response to lower energy intake. Since the beginning of time, our body’s main objective has been to survive famines, and while we have evolved significantly as a society, our biological responses still remain the same: survive at all costs. The different systems in our bodies will slow to conserve energy; our involuntary movements (twitches, blinks, etc.) will decrease; our propensity for purposeful movement will decline. All of these factors contribute to TDEE being negatively impacted. 

Metabolism is highly elastic though and, just as it can be influenced downward by restricting calorie intake, it can be influenced upward by increasing calorie intake. Setting goals outside of being smaller versions of ourselves and eating accordingly is arguably the most impactful metabolism “hack.” Interested in diving deeper into metabolic adaptation? This blog post is for you!

While genetics heavily factor into our individual basal metabolic rates, we have the ability to influence our total daily energy expenditure in a meaningful way - no social media gimmicks involved – by shifting our mindsets and behaviors, and enjoying lots of positive outcomes as a result.

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