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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 convenient to blame our extra pounds on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let’s look at the real importance of metabolism - and better yet, how to get the most “burn” for your buck by recharging your metabolism.

In the most basic sense, metabolism means each of the physical and chemical changes that occur within the body’s cells. Most often, though, metabolism refers to the process in which the body gets and uses energy from food, so it really does play an important part in weight gain and loss.

Not everyone is given the same metabolism, and our rates actually change throughout our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism is not necessarily making excuses. Age affects metabolism, which will slow about 5% every 10 years after age 40, and by sex, as males have a tendency to burn more calories at rest than females, and by the quantity of muscle mass you have (more muscle generally means a higher rate of metabolism). Genetics also impacts metabolism, not to mention having children, as well as whether a woman chooses to breast-feed.

Despite all of the wild cards, the fact is that if your calorie intake surpasses your metabolism, surplus energy will get housed in the body as fat. Though many of the aspects affecting metabolic rate cannot be changed, fortunately, there are methods to rev up the metabolism you are born with.

The first directive is to eat the right foods in the right amounts. When you miss a meal, your body goes into 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 your weight loss.

When you finally do eat after having skipped a meal, instead of burning the calories in the food you’ve just taken in, your body converts them to body fat to hold for the next “fast.” To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 - 6 smaller meals over the course of the day and aim to eat close to the same times each day. Most importantly, never skip a meal.

You can also step up your metabolic rate with exercise, including both aerobic workouts and weight lifting. Aerobic activities, such as running, biking and dancing, burn more calories in the short term, while weight lifting will build more muscle, which boosts metabolism and burns more calories in the long term - even when you are at rest, muscle uses more calories to function than fat.

In fact, each pound of muscle requires 35 calories a day, while each pound of fat requires 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 forces your body work harder to maintain its processes.

This is partly why it is almost always easiest to lose weight when you start dieting, and is more difficult as you go along because, when you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at an elevated rate, so that even a slight decrease in calories will yield an immediate weight loss.

But what happens after that immediate loss, when a plateau occurs and motivation seems to go by the “weigh” side? Persistent compulsions and cravings can quickly return, and when they do, do not neglect a valuable resource - lose weight hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious mind so that, in essence, you can get rid of food cravings. When we study why we snack, identifying why weight loss hypnosis works so successfully becomes evident.

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

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

NLP can be equally as essential as exercise and motivation because, as you learned above, it can help make sure that you eat the right kinds of foods at the right times, and this is a chief aspect of turbo-charging your metabolism. If you aim to keep your metabolism at full speed and make sure that all of hard work and exercise are not going to waste by succumbing to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings altogether.

Alan B. Densky, CH has worked with clients for weight loss and appetite suppression since 1978. Visit his hypnotherapy website to view his Free hypnotherapy videos, or learn about his effective lose weight hypnosis CDs or his effective video hypnotism for losing weight DVDs.

- Alan B. Densky, CH