your metabolism.

Sleep, what you eat, and how you exercise totally affect your metabolism...which helps you to burn fat and calories.  I think a combination of these things are what have helped me to lose weight this time around. (I'm officially in the 130s this week!  yay!)

Did you know that not getting enough sleep lowers your metabolism?

Not eating breakfast will slow your metabolism down?

And doing the same exercise over and over again with no changes doesn't get your metabolism going like spiking your exercise?

Eating:

I just read an article in "Healthy Style" that talks about all of these points.  Eating sugar doesn't make your body work very hard.  It breaks down sugar quickly and immediately stores it as fat.  Fiber takes longer to break down and slows sugar from entering the bloodstream.  That's why it's so important to increase your fiber (and I thought it was just a natural laxative). 

Also, eating breakfast is super important to the way you eat the rest of the day.  Skipping breakfast is just like getting up on the wrong side of the bed.  It takes a long time to get over it, if you ever do, through out the day.  Consider having some protein at breakfast to help last you longer in the morning...your body takes a lot longer to digest it so it gives you energy longer.  And get this!  You "increase post-meal calorie burn by as much as 35%"!  Burning calories sounds good to me...

Sleeping:

I also read that when your body is sleep-deprived your body produces huge quanities of a hunger hormone and makes you crave MORE sugar and carbohydrates!!  Hello!  I've gotten to bed late all weekend.  Not one early night to bed!  I've been craving chocolate and sugar like I never have in the last few months of trying to maintain a healthier life.  No sleep totally explains it...and I must say, I gave into that chocolate craving on Friday night and had some chocolate icecream.  It was soooo good...now I know why I wanted it so badly.

Exercise:

This is another reason I think that my weight loss is working this time.  I go to a track on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I do a very brisk walk the first 5 times around.  On the 6th time I sprint around the first end of the track then do a speed walk to the next bend in the track.  At the next bend I sprint around the curve.  I do this for four laps around the track.  I then do a very brisk walk for 2-3 laps and then do a cool down lap around the track.

On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday I take a brisk walk around my neighborhood for 20 minutes.  I come back to my house and do weight training for about 40 minutes.  I do 12 reps on each of my arm exercises then I go straight to my legs and do 20 reps on each of my leg exercises.  As soon as I'm done with my legs I start all over again.  I do a total of 3 run throughs of training my whole body.  I then do 15 army pushups and try to increase by at least one pushup each week.  I do situps 30 to the middle and 30 to each side.  I repeat that three times.  I end by doing the cool down that I mentioned on my blog post here to reduce stress). 

When I read in Healthy Style I was excited to find out that I was doing the best type of exercise I could do for my metabolism: Interval Training.  On MWF I do sprints that spike my heart rate and so that increases my metabolisms power to burn.  "When you exercise this way, your mitochondria, the little engines in your cells that burn calories, run hotter all day."

So...I think I've found some of the keys that make my body burn calories and fat.  I definitely need to get to bed earlier tonight!

healthy. LIFE.