We've all heard it or even said it one time or another: "I'm not able to lose weight because of my metabolism." It's easy to blame our extra pounds on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let's examine the real importance of metabolism - and better yet, how you can get the most "burn" for your buck by recharging your metabolism. 

In the most fundamental sense, metabolism includes each of the chemical and physical changes that happen inside the cells of the body. Most often, however, metabolism refers to the process in which the body acquires and uses energy from food, so it really does have an important role in weight gain and loss. 

Not everyone has the same metabolism, and our rates actually vary during our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism isn't necessarily making excuses. Age affects metabolism, which will slow about 5% every 10 years after age 40, and by sex, as males typically burn more calories at rest than females, and by the amount of muscle mass you possess (more muscle generally means a higher metabolic rate). Our genes also influences metabolism, not to mention having children, as well as whether a woman chooses to breast-feed. 

In spit of all of the wild cards, the simple fact is that when your calorie intake exceeds your metabolism, excess energy will get stored in the body as fat. Though some of the factors affecting metabolic rate can't be altered, thankfully, there are methods to rev up the metabolism you're born with.

The first directive is to consume the correct foods in the right quantities. When you miss a meal, your body switches to starvation mode, which slows metabolism to keep calories, because it does not know when it will be fed again. And when the metabolism slows down, so does the rate at which you lose weight. 

When you finally do get food after having skipped a meal, instead of burning the calories in the food you've just eaten, your body converts them to body fat to keep for the next "fast." To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 - 6 small meals during the day and try to eat close to the same times every day. Most importantly, never skip a meal.

You can also step up your metabolic rate with exercise, including both aerobic routines and weight training. Aerobic activities, such as biking, dancing and running, burn more calories in the short term, while weight training will build more muscle, which boosts metabolism and burns more calories in the long term - even when you're sitting still, muscle requires more calories to function than fat. 

In fact, each pound of muscle burns 35 calories a day, while every pound of fat burns just 2 calories per day. Despite this, you might be surprised that the more weight you posses, the faster your metabolism is likely to run. Simply put, the extra weight makes your body work more to maintain its processes. 

This is partially why it is nearly always easiest to lose weight when you start dieting, and is challenging as you go along because, if you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at an elevated rate, so that even a minor decrease in calories will give you an immediate weight loss.

But what happens after that immediate loss, when a plateau occurs and motivation seems to go by the "weigh" side? Old compulsions and cravings can suddenly come back, and when they do, don't overlook a valuable resource  lose weight self-hypnosis. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious so that, in essence, you can do away with food cravings. When we study why we snack, recognizing why weight loss hypnosis works so successfully becomes evident. 

For a lot of people, snacking has become a habit - maybe you do it automatically when you're driving or watching TV or when you're under stress. Hypnosis can actually reprogram your thoughts to cut those associations, leaving you to drive or watch TV without experiencing the need to eat. 

One of the most successful lose weight hypnosis techniques for breaking the snacking cycle is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, which relies on negotiating with the unconscious and making it use the same thought processes that are creating your appetite, to eliminate your appetite. NLP requires many years of study and practical experience for a hypnotherapist to learn and master, but positive results can come very quickly and seem almost magical to a person who has always experienced cravings. 

NLP can be equally as essential as exercise and motivation because, as you learned above, it can help ensure that you eat the proper kinds of foods at the right times, and this is a main ingredient for turbo-charging your metabolism. If you aim to keep your metabolism at full speed and ensure that all of your exercise and hard work aren't going to waste by giving in to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings altogether.

Alan B. Densky, CH has been assisting clients with weight loss and appetite suppression since 1978. Visit his hypnosis & NLP website to view his Free hypnosis videos, or learn about his effective lose weight hypnosis CDs or his effective lose weight through hypnosis MP3s.

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