Ways to boost your metabolism – How Acupuncture can help
(Brookline & Boston, MA)
1. Eating correctly
– Emphasizing proteins and reducing carbohydrates and sugars
– Protein helps to build muscle which will help you burn fat
– Choose protein with every meal (eg. Chicken, fish, eggs, tempeh)
How acupuncture can help: Regular treatments has been shown to help control appetite.
2. Exercise optimally
– Mixing in interval work-outs with your regular cardio will help to burn more calories, and also keeps your metabolism going even hours after your work out.
– An easy interval workout could include a 2 minute warm up, 30 seconds of high intensity cardio(difficult to carry on a conversation), followed by 90 seconds of lower intensity cardio. Do the 30-90 second intervals for 7 sets, followed by another 2 minutes of cool down. This can be done using any cardio machine, running and walking outdoors, or using hills to add intensity.
How acupuncture can help: By treating aches, pains, and/or injuries, it will allow you to continue exercising. Many people stop their exercise programs due to injuries or pain (eg. Back pain, knee pain, etc). Acupuncture is a great treatment for providing relief for painful areas by reducing inflammation and helping the healing process. Acupuncture can also help increase your energy to give you more of a boost to get to the gym or lace up those running shoes.
3. Reduce Stress response
– To the extent that you can, remove or reduce the stressors in your life—eg. Learn to say no if you need to
– Adopt some stress relief techniques to incorporate on a regular basis, because stressors are not going to go away completely. There will always be something to stress you out. While we can’t always control those things, we can control the way we respond to stress.
– When we’re stressed, we release stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones signal to our body to store fat, particularly in the abdominal region. Reducing and managing stress will do a lot for helping your metabolism.
How acupuncture can help: Acupuncture has been shown to reduce stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) and regulate neurotransmitters such as Serotonin and Dopamine – the feel good chemicals. With regular treatments, the body learns to react differently to stressors, and many report a higher tolerance to stress in general.
4. Get enough good quality sleep
– Lack of good quality sleep has been shown to increase the “hunger” signals in our brain.
How acupuncture can help: By regulating sleep. Acupuncture can improve sleep onset (time it takes to fall asleep), as well as sleep maintenance (staying asleep through the night).
5. Eat fiber rich foods
– Fiber fills us up and prevents us from over-eating
– eg. Vegetables, nuts, fruits
6. Eat regularly
– Keeping blood sugar levels stable is very important
– Also, the type of food is important too: make sure you’re eating protein with every meal throughout the day and have snacks that are high in protein (eg. Nuts, nut butters, cold cuts like turkey slices, hummus, etc.)
– Reducing starchy carbs and sugars
7. Strength training
– Many people don’t realize that strength training actually plays a big role in your body’s metabolism and fat burning capability.
– 20 minutes of weight lifting or other strength training (eg. TRX, pilates, etc), 2-3x/week
Aside from helping to improve metabolism and achieve optimal weight, this approach will also help with balancing hormones, boost fertility, improve immune function, and reduce other stress related disorders such as high blood pressure and insomnia.
Your acupuncturist may also be able to help you with herbal and nutritional supplements to help you boost your metabolism, control your appetite and balance hormones naturally.
