If you’ve caused metabolic damage as a result of following starvation diets or losing weight too rapidly in the past, it can be extremely difficult to achieve any further fat loss at all. The good news is, metabolic damage can be repaired. All it takes is the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition, all done consistently over time.
The irony is that most of the diet programs that claim to help you get rid of excess weight, only end up making it harder for you in the long run because they use harsh metabolism-decreasing diets and not enough exercise.
It may take a little longer if you have really messed things up with severe starvation dieting in the past, especially if you’ve lost a lot of lean body mass, but it is never hopeless. Anyone can increase their metabolism. This is something that I am personally trying to repair because when I started college I used to put my body into starvation a lot to lose weight. I did manage to lose 20-30 pounds by doing this, but I was really unhealthy and then gained more of it back!!
What’s most important for upping your metabolism is consistancy in applying the right nutrition and training principles every single day. Things like this would include: Meal frequency: eat 5-6 small meals per day. Meal timing: eat approximately every 3 hours, with a substantial breakfast and a substantial post workout meal. Sufficient Caloric Intake: maintain a small calorie deficit and avoid starvation-level diets (suggested safe levels for fat loss: 2100-2500 calories per day for men, 1400-1800 calories per day for women). Food choices: Select natural, unprocessed foods with high thermic effect (lean proteins like chicken, turkey, egg whites and fish are highly thermic, as are all green vegetables, salad vegetables). Cardio training: Push up the intensity a bit if you really want to get a metabolic boost. Walking and low intensity cardio is fine, but higher intensity is more metabolism-stimulating. Weight training: The basic exercises that include the largest muscle groups or even call into play the entire body as a unit will have a much greater metabolism stimulating effect than isolation exercises.
Consistency is the key. If you stop and start, or skip meals and workouts often, you will not even get off the ground. Once you get your metabolic engine running, you’ve got to keep feeding it fuel or the fire will die down. Picture an old fashioned wood burning stove…Imagine you’re in a cabin up in the mountains in the winter. It’s cold in there and you want to keep the cabin warm. Can you achieve this by feeding the fire once or twice per day? Nope. Not enough fuel to burn, so not much heat is generated. What if you just toss an entire pile of wood in the stove all at once? Will that work? Nope. Lots of fuel, but can’t all be used at once… it just smothers the fire and the excess just sits there.
Your goal is to get your metabolism burning hot and keep it burning and this cannot be achieved by missing meals, missing workouts or with sporadic, infrequent training. Trying to starve the fat with crash diets is what causes the metabolic damage in the first place!
Keep all these things in mind when you are on a weight loss program. I am currently in the process of building up and repairing my own metabolism caused by years of putting my body into starvation and then fueling myself with all the wrongs foods that contained grease and fat. It takes time, so you just have to be patient and keep working at it!