The Best Ways To Slow Down Your Metabolism

In most cases, you’ll start reading about all the different things that you can do to boost your metabolic rate and burn fat faster.

But, it’s not very often that people talk about the other side of the coin – things that could potentially be slowing down your progress and causing you to see less than optimal progress.

It’s important that you do consider both sides of this equation however as not only do you need to make sure that you are doing what you can to enhance your metabolic rate, but you also need to be sure you’re doing what you can to prevent it from slowing down.

It really doesn’t do you all that much good if you’re doing things that increase your metabolism if you’re also doing things that slow your metabolism down as well.

Then they would just counter balance each other, leaving you pretty much where you were in the first place.

Let’s have a quick look at a few of the best ways to slow your metabolism down so you know precisely what you must be avoiding.

Crash Diets

The very first way to kill your metabolism incredibly quickly is to go on a crash diet plan. Crash diets, that is, diets that are incredibly low in calories and provide hardly enough to even sustain life, are not going to do your fat loss progress any favors whatsoever.

So many people come to believe that crash diets are the fastest way to see weight loss success. Nothing is furthest from the truth.

While you may get some initial weight loss on them, you won’t get the long-term fat loss that you’re after. In fact, you won’t even lose much body fat at all.

Instead, you’re going to shed lean muscle tissue along with water. Is that what you really want?

Since you’ll be consuming so few calories, the body will take this to mean you’re trying to starve it and in response to this, it’s going to slow down your metabolism further.

The fewer calories it burns, the greater the chances are that it will stay alive.

This slow calorie burn means it becomes harder and harder for you to continue to see fat loss success, and you’ll eventually just end up falling off the program entirely.

Use a more moderate calorie deficit instead. You’re going to see far better results that way over the long haul and also enjoy the process that much as well. Crash diets are not a fun time – they’ll leave you drained for energy and hating every hour of your life while on them.

Very Low-Carb Diets

The second good way to kill your metabolism fast is to use a very low-carb diet for an extended period of time. You don’t necessarily have to use a crash diet to see a decline to your metabolic rate. Low-carb diets can be just as detrimental because carbohydrates are the primary nutrient that is associated with good thyroid gland function.

If your low-carb diet is not providing at least 100 grams of carbs each day, there is the potential that it will cause a metabolic decline.

To avoid this from occurring, either add brief higher carb periods back into the diet plan at periodic times – every two weeks or so, or else add more carbs around times that you workout when your body will use them as a fuel source anyway.

This will help to keep your thyroid gland up-regulated so that your metabolism keeps humming along.

Lack Of Sleep

Moving along, lack of sleep is the next big issue that you need to be concerned over. How could sleep influence your metabolic rate you might think?

It does – in a major way. Those who aren’t getting enough sleep at night – at least seven or eight hours, are not going to have as strong of metabolic rates and may also struggle to control their hunger more as well.

If you often find on those restless nights that you are really struggling to say no to continually reaching for a snack all throughout the day, this is very likely why.

Low levels of sleep will significantly impact your hunger regulation, so it’s really in your best interest to make sure that you are getting enough.

Long Duration Cardio Exercise

Next up on our list of worst things that you can do that will immediately decrease your metabolic rate is to do plenty of long duration cardio exercise.

This variation of cardio is just going to cause the body to burn up lean muscle tissue, which then means that you’re going to burn fewer calories each and every hour during the day.

Your lean muscle mass is highly metabolically active, so it’s the type of tissue that you must make sure you’re maintaining as you go about your diet program.

Avoid long duration cardio activity and do interval training instead.

High Stress Lifestyle

Finally, the last thing that you should be avoiding if you want to sustain a higher metabolic rate is making sure that you keep your stress levels low.

Stress is going to cause the body to release the hormone cortisol, which can then also eat away at your lean muscle tissue, further lowering your metabolic rate.

So while stress won’t decrease the metabolism directly, indirectly it definitely can.

So keep these quick tips in mind. If you’re serious about fat loss success, it’s imperative that you aren’t committing any of these fatal errors. Focus on avoiding these and doing all the things you can to boost your metabolism such as eating a high protein, unprocessed diet, getting enough sleep, performing heavy weight lifting, and making sure to consume green tea daily.

If you do that, you will be burning more calories each and every day, making fat loss feel far easier.