I have something to share with you to BOOST your metabolism.

However, I must be honest.

It’s not weird.

It’s not a trick.

And there is certainly no magic involved.

But, what I can tell you is that once you have read this article you will come away with the knowledge and the practical information you need to start ramping up your metabolic rate. The power really is going to be in your hands, you could give your metabolic rate a small boost, or if you really wanted to it could be like pimping your car with nitric oxide.

First I am going to cover some ground work, because it’s important you know this stuff.

---

What Makes Up Our Total Energy Burn?

Let’s go over the components of the metabolism:

• BMR – Basal Metabolic Rate – This is the number of calories your body uses at rest.
• PA – Physical Activity – The number of calories used to fuel formal exercise. This also includes NEAT  (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) the energy used for everything outside formal exercise such as cleaning the car, tapping your foot and walking round the shops.
• TEF – Thermic Effect of Food – might be better to call it the thermic effect of digestion, as it is the calories used to digest and process the food we eat.

BMR

This is the number of calories you burn whilst at rest, doing nothing. So our BMR is directly related to our total bodyweight, the bigger you are the more calories burned at rest. The amount it contributes to total energy expenditure depends largely on your personal activity. For an endurance athlete it may only be 40% of their total energy burn, but for a sedentary office worker it could be 75%.

Total lean body mass is important too, because it’s more metabolically active, which means it needs more energy to remain. So we can shunt this somewhat in our favour by making our body big and lean, but it’s still only a little more metabolically active than fat (6kcal per lb vs. 2kcal — so if you gain 10lbs of muscle, which is a lot, you only burn an extra 60kcal). Your BMR is mostly determined by your organs (burning 24.4kcal per lb — on average 60% of your BMR). [6]

So above gaining some muscle (which has little impact), there’s not much you can do about your BMR.

— Side note: metabolic adaption/damage proposes you can somehow lower your BMR, now this has been found to be true at around a 10% lower rate than expected, BUT — only found in VERY extreme cases. So for most, it’s not a worry.

Physical Activity 

Lifting weights, going for a run, playing football, anything that is purposeful exercise, that is physical activity (duh!). This can vary a lot between individuals, and of course it’s under our own control, which is important. You can go to the gym, burn a bunch of calories, but remember, the after burn or EPOC is relatively insignificant, and going to the gym for an hour might burn somewhere between 200 – 300 calories, which is good but it isn’t a tonne.

Although this is in our control we all have a limited amount of time in the day, your formal exercise isn’t going to contribute a massive amount to your metabolic rate .

NEAT

Your NEAT is any activity that is largely subconscious or non planned exercise on our part. You may see Non Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA) referenced too, which can be thought as low-grade activity you do on a daily basis. I am putting it all under NEAT to keep things simple.

What you really need to know is that this can be anything from walking the dog to tapping your foot, it’s not formal exercise and it’s highly variable between individuals.

For most it accounts for just over 30% and so it can really heighten your metabolic rate, for example take me, I sit on my butt most of the day and get up to walk to the gym vs. Connor my online client, who is a personal trainer and is up on his feet most of the day taking people through workouts. I am probably burning something a long the lines of 75kcal per hour whereas Connor could be burning 200kcal per hour. Over the course of an 8 hour day the difference between our NEAT could be 1000 calories. Which also makes sense, since he is a good 20lbs lighter than me but maintains weight on 1000 more calories than I do.

Thus, low NEAT levels can make getting into a caloric deficit somewhat harder for some people, or in Connor’s case, he struggles to gain weight. This can lead to a lot of problems, such as excessively low calorie intakes and crazy high exercise to make up for the low daily burn.

TEF

This one, like BMR is pretty stable assuming your diet is fairly regular. It’s mainly determined by your total caloric intake, but like BMR you can change the inputs and see small changes. How? Well each macronutrient has a different TEF, below is the % of energy lost per 100kcals consumed:

• Fat – 3-4% of 100kcal consumed.
• Carbohydrates – 4-7% of 100kcal consumed.
• Protein – 20-25% of 100kcal consumed.
• Alcohol – 15-20% of 100kcal consumed.
• Fibre – 15-20% of 100kcal consumed.

So for every 100kcal of protein consumed you will lose 20-25 calories via TEF. Often this leads to arguments for something like a Paleo diet i.e. meat and vegetables. Yet TEF as you can see from the above really doesn’t contribute much to total caloric burn, generally 6-12%.

Any changes you make to your diet above caloric intake are really going to have little impact.

---

Significantly boost your metabolic rate

What people think will boost their metabolic rate:

• Hot spicy food
• CLA
• Drinking ice cold water
• The after burn effect (EPOC)
• Fat burners
• Taking cold showers
• Green tea
  

…now do me a favour.

Check the infographic above, and then think — do any of those listed really contribute to TEF, Physical Activity or our BMR to a large degree?

No, they don’t.

They’re gimmicks, fads, things that aren’t worth our consideration and in my opinion get far too much attention, so much so it angers me, and I’m a relatively chilled out dude. The information I have gone over above leaves us with a good understanding of what determines how many calories our body needs to maintain weight. The fact is, we’re all different shapes, sizes and have different activity levels and therefore require different calorie amounts.

A large active male will need a lot more than a small sedentary female, and a very active average sized female will likely require more than a very inactive small male. It’s not like that large man is drinking all the green tea and only eating spicy foods washed down with ice cold water and the female isn’t.

It’s all related to the above.

We know both diet and exercise have key roles to play with our body composition goals, you cannot out train a bad diet, because whatever happens, excess calories means weight gain. But, you need to have a decent nutrition plan in place to set you up for success, otherwise you may binge, have low energy levels and just hate life. As I said before, both are very important, I wouldn’t put one before the other.

In addition to exercise, and diet, there is something else that differs person to person. It makes up a lot of our total caloric burn, and could potentially be the difference between seeing results and not…

—-> NEAT<—-

Variations in NEAT can explain differences in weight gain or loss. In J.A. Levine et al Review ‘Non-exercise activity thermogenesis: the crouching tiger hidden dragon of societal weight gain’ they found that Obese individuals appear to exhibit an innate tendency to be seated for 2.5 hours per day more than sedentary lean counterparts.

[bctt tweet=”Want to be lean, get off your butt” username=”revivestronger”]

Just look at this graph James Krieger presented at the PTDC conference, really look and take in the fact that NEAT was found to vary by up to 2000 calories between individuals.

That’s huge!

[bctt tweet=”NEAT has been found to vary up to 2000 Calories between people” username=”revivestronger”]

Your job is killing your metabolic rate

An office workers NEAT is almost guaranteed to be lower than a brick layers, even just fidgeting vs. siting can really change the amount of calories we burn. And as we saw with me vs. Connor NEAT could easily be the difference between being in a caloric surplus vs. deficit.

Because you’re working for a good 8 hours of the day your career choice can largely determine your levels of NEAT. Lean people have been found to spend less time sitting, and more time standing or walking than their overweight counterparts.

Your parents gave you a duff metabolism

It’s clear also that genetics do play a role because our NEAT can also vary with energy intake. In one study 12 pairs of twins were overfed by 1000kcal a day [4], and they saw a large variation in energy expenditure that was not attributable to BMR. Basically some people increased their activity when they were given more to eat, and others remained coach potatoes. 

In fact Ravussin et al found this in their metabolic ward studies in which 177 people were confined to a human respiratory chamber  (a very small room, think bedroom size) and found up to a 685 variability in calorie expenditure that was put down to being differences in NEAT. [7]

An increase in caloric intake does see NEAT increase in most, the amount it increases is a good predictor of fat gain. As those who saw their NEAT rise the most would see the least fat gain.

However don’t you dare use your genetics as an excuse, there is still a lot you can do.

---

How to increase your NEAT

Hopefully I have painted a pretty clear picture of one thing you can do to boost your metabolism.

In fact, it isn’t one thing, but many little things.

1) Walk More

This may seem simple, but walking can really be the difference between maintaining and gaining weight. A systematic review of studies using pedometers as an intervention for musculoskeletal diseases (MSD) was performed and they found:

• All studies showed positive findings for using a pedometer to increase the level of Physical Activity (PA) [5]
• It was found walking was significantly increased by an average of 1950 steps per day, a 32% increase above baseline [5]

^ That is pretty damn awesome ^

To workout a rough calorie burn for walking a mile simply multiply your weight in pounds by 0.57. So for me at 177lbs, I burn around 100 calories per mile, or because there are around 0.62 miles in a kilometer, I burn 62 calories per KM walked.

[bctt tweet=”For every 30 minutes of walking you’ll burn 150-300kcals” username=”revivestronger”]

At the end of the day, we don’t really care what the calorie burn is, just know that walking can burn significant calories, and whether you measure steps, distance or calories burnt you get a way to be accountable to an aspect of your NEAT.

The standard recommendation is 10,000 steps a day, which isn’t a bad shout. I personally average 8,000 steps a day, it would be A LOT lower as I work from home at a desk, but since introducing a 30 minute morning walk into my day it significantly increased.

It can be as simple as that.

For you office bound guys, make sure to get out at lunchtime. Even a 30 minute break could get you 3000-5000 steps without really trying, that could equate to 200-300 calories, that could be the difference between losing fat and not.

How you can increase your step count:

• Go for a 30 minute morning walk = 200-300kcal.
• At lunch go for a 20 minute walk = 100-200kcal.
• Exchange 15 minute transport journeys for 30 minute brisk walks = 300-400kcal.
• Aim for 10,000 steps a day = 300-500kcal.

2) Stand More

When we stand vs. sit our resting heart rate is higher, we therefore burn more calories while stood vs. sat. On average it beats 10 more times per minute, which is actually only around 0.7kcals. However, say you stood for 4 hours rather than sat during the day, that would equate to almost 170 more calories a day.

Again that may not seem a lot, but over the course of the week that becomes over 1000 calories more! Think about doing 1000 calories of cardio…now you see my point.

[bctt tweet=”For every hour you’re stood and not sat you’ll burn around an extra 40kcals” username=”revivestronger”]

That fact in combination with the potential downsides of sitting for our mobility has led to the huge increase in standing desks now available. Personally as I work on a laptop I just shove a couple of dictionaries and some of my larger nutrition and exercise textbooks underneath, and hey presto, standing desk. I can then alternate each hour between sitting and standing, so getting those 4 extra hours standing is quite achievable just via this.

I understand that most places of work don’t have such pieces of equipment or the ability to do as I do. However, all is not lost, you can still find other opportunities to get up. There are some nifty apps nowadays that nudge you every hour to get on your feet, a simple way to do this is to just set your phone to vibrate every hour. It’s silent so it won’t disrupt anyone around you or go off during a meeting or lecture.

Get up and go get a drink, take a trip to the loo or just go and chat to someone about an area of work instead of emailing. By giving yourself a reason to get up, you’re much more likely to do so.

How you can increase your time stood:

• Set up a standing desk.
• Set a vibrating alarm to go off every hour, get up and stretch your legs.
• Stand when taking public transport.
• Aim to stand 4 hours that you might otherwise be sat = 170kcal.

Standing and walking, what could be simpler? There are numerous ways you could actually increase your daily burn, but they all encompass you being on your feet and better yet moving. Below I will list out a load of potential daily burners to add to your metabolic fuel.

---

What next?

1. Walk the dog.
2. Mow the lawn.
3. Play outside (kids/other people optional).
4. Dance!
5. Only take the stairs.
6. Hoover the carpet.
7. Wash the car.
8. Call your mum & go for a walk.
9. Become a fidget (Standing whilst fidgeting burns 148kcal per hour vs. 88kcal whilst standing motionless) [8].
10. Just randomly flex (it is surprising but posing practice is tiring).
11. Laugh, you shouldn’t need an excuse.
12. Play Pokemon GO!

• ALSO: sign up to my daily (most days) newsletter, because it’ll no doubt give you some motivation to get moving each day – do that here (and get some freebies too)

---

References

1. Levine JA, Schleusner SJ, Jensen MD. Energy expenditure of nonexercise activity.Am J Clin Nutr. 2000; 72: 1451–1454.
2. Bouchard C, Tremblay A, Despres JP, et al. The response to long-term overfeeding in identical twins. N Engl J Med. 1990; 322: 1477–1482.
3. Diaz EO, Prentice AM, Goldberg GR, Murgatroyd PR, Coward WA. Metabolic response to experimental overfeeding in lean and overweight healthy volunteers. Am J Clin Nutr. 1992; 56: 641–655.
4. Levine JA, Eberhardt NL, Jensen MD. Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in resistance to fat gain in humans. Science. 1999; 283(5399): 212–4.
5. Suliman Mansi et al,.  A systematic review of studies using pedometers as an intervention for musculoskeletal disease. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders201415:231 DOI: 10.1186/1471-2474-15-231
6. Illner K¹, Brinkmann G, Heller M, Bosy-Westphal A, Müller MJ. Metabolically active components of fat free mass and resting energy expenditure in nonobese adults. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2000 Feb;278(2):E308-15.
7. E Ravussin, S Lillioja, T E Anderson, L Christin, and C BogardusDeterminants of 24-hour energy expenditure in man. Methods and results using a respiratory chamber. J Clin Invest. 1986 Dec; 78(6): 1568–1578.
8. Levine JA¹, Schleusner SJ, Jensen MD. Energy expenditure of nonexercise activity. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Dec;72(6):1451-4.