7 Ways to Burn More Fat While Sleeping

What if you could burn hundreds of extra calories per day while sitting in a chair or even while sleeping. Think about how much easier it would be to burn fat and stay lean. How much less time you would have to spend working out at the gym and how much bigger and more filling your meals could be on a daily basis. 

Well, this actually isn't some distant fantasy, but instead, for most people, it's totally possible simply by boosting their metabolism, or more specifically, the resting metabolic rate. And this is one of the biggest and most. Overlook advantages that give some people the ability to eat more food, have more cheat days and simply enjoy life while staying lean. 

So we will go over seven powerful science-backed ways to boost your metabolism, allowing you to burn hundreds of extra calories per day without any extra effort. 

And the very first one is to optimize your thyroid function. This one alone can boost your metabolism by between 500 to 1000 extra calories per day. If you currently have certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies preventing your thyroid from operating at maximum capacity. 

Iodine Absorption and Metabolism

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland that's located in the front of your neck.  Research has proved a long time ago that your thyroid hormones have a major impact on your metabolic rate. 

Now, out of all the vitamins and minerals out there, it's especially important to get enough. iodine because your thyroid gland uses iodine to make thyroid hormones. 

A big problem is that according to the World Health Organization, 35% of the world population isn't getting enough iodine on a daily basis, and not getting enough iodine in your diet can lead to very low levels of thyroid hormones being produced drastically, slowing down your resting metabolism. 

Now more than 70 countries serve iodine salt as the major source of iodine intake. One-fourth of a teaspoon of iodized salts has about 100 micrograms of iodine.  The salt used in processed foods, which is the major source of salt for most Americans, however typically does not contain iodine. If salt used in processed food contains iodine, the ingredients list of that food should mention it.

Seaweed, saltwater fish, and seafood are natural sources of dietary iodine. Dairy products also supply iodine in the diet at varying levels. Iodized salt usually adds less than about 300 micrograms of iodine daily to the diet. Most multivitamin supplements of minerals contain 150 micrograms of iodine, it can be considered if the foods you eat do not contain enough iodine.

Zinc, Selenium, and Weight Loss

When it comes to weight loss, people think mostly about diet and exercise.  But sometimes there is another factor that plays a significant role.  An insufficiently active thyroid can make losing weight difficult.

Your thyroid helps regulate your metabolism, which is basically how your body converts food into energy by burning calories.

According to the American Thyroid Association, for those who have a low basal metabolic rate, their metabolism is working a little bit slower than regular.  As a result, they don’t get to burn calories as quickly and may notice weight gain.

There are two important minerals for thyroid function, which are zinc and selenium.  They both have a role in the conversion of the thyroid hormone T4 into its active form T3. 

Specifically, a zinc deficiency can have a very negative effect on metabolism. One study shows that people who are deficient in zinc boosted their resting metabolism by taking zinc supplements and after four months it went up by a whopping 992 calories per day.

On the other hand, short of selenium causes thyroid function to stall, making it difficult for weight loss. “When selenium is low, the immune system starts attacking organs, particularly the thyroid gland,” explained Ridha Arem, MD, founder of the Texas Thyroid Institute. 

Researchers found that those with lower levels of selenium were more likely to have thyroid damage than those with adequate levels.  As the thyroid becomes increasingly damaged, metabolism slows further, and the body burns fewer calories and stores more fat. 

Use MCT Oil for Weight Loss

Another thing that you could do to boost your metabolism is to switch from regular cooking oils to medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) that are specifically high in lauric acid. 

MCTs are smaller than other fats and digest very quickly.  It can create a blast of heat that burns calories. One perfect example of this is coconut oil. Compared to long-chain triglycerides, like those found in butter, it can help improve metabolism to a greater extent.  Scientists have found that after eating MCTs, people generally incinerate three times more calories for six hours.

When MCTs are broken down, they trigger the rapid release of special compounds that enhance fat burning and make our energy soar. A Columbia University study found that women in their fifties given MCTs lost six times more belly fat than those who use olive oil. 

It is important to keep in mind that you need to replace regular oil with MCT. It is not to increase your consumption of medium-chain fats like coconut oil, but you have to replace some of the other sources of fat that you're using.  Otherwise just adding more oil to your diet will get you more calories than it'll reduce for you.

Metabolism of Protein

The next way to drastically increase your metabolism is to eat enough protein, which is one of the three macronutrients, protein, carbs, and fats. 

Your muscle contains the most protein in your body.  When you do weight training, your muscles get bigger by adding additional proteins to the muscle fibers.  This process requires amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. 

Protein gives your body amino acids to be used in making muscle.  When you lift weights, eating more protein can increase your muscle mass gains.

Protein may be the best way to increase your metabolism.  It has a high thermic effect on food. That is the energy it takes for your body to digest, process, and store protein is much higher compared to other nutrients.

A 2014 review published in the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism stated that 15 to 30% of the calories taken in from eating protein are used right back up during the digestion process.

Research shows that each pound of muscle burns about 68 calories per day.  It is not a big number, but in addition to burning calories, there are benefits that you get from having more muscle in your body.  It has a significant impact on how your body uses energy at rest. 

First, more muscles give you higher insulin sensitivity. Your body can use glucose more efficiently. Insulin resistance is the opposite, it make it hard for your body to burn fat for energy. So we want to have a higher insulin sensitivity and developing our muscles helps. 

Additionally, more muscles help you to take in more carbohydrates in the form of glucose into your muscle cells rather than into your fat cells. It increases your metabolism.

This is why studies have shown that bodybuilders can have a higher metabolism than similar control groups without the extra muscle mass. Once you add all the effects of eating more protein and building more muscle together, you can see the benefit to have higher metabolic rate and lose weight.

Drink Water to Boost Metabolism

It may surprise some people, but staying hydrated throughout the day with water affects your metabolism.

Studies have suggested that there are connections between drinking water and the efficiency of burning calories. For example, an article in the journal Frontiers of Nutrition published in 2016 suggested that there is a link between levels of hydration and increased rates of lipolysis, which is the process fats are broken down in the body.

There was another study showed that drinking 500 ml of water (a little more than two cups) increases the metabolic rate by 30% for about 30 to 40 minutes.  It means about an extra 24 calories being burned just by drinking two cups of water. 

Now, that may not sound a lot.  But if you do this multiple times a day and on top of that you drink cold water instead of regular water, you would burn 100 or more extra calories per day. This is because two separate studies both showed an increase by up to 25% in resting metabolic rate for an hour after drinking cold water.

Cold water is particularly believed to be beneficial because it triggers your body to burn more calories to produce heat.  Having said that, it should be mentioned that it is not going to happen in a magical way to lose weight by simply drinking more water.

It is also important to maintain a good diet as well in addition to drinking water.  Doing both will help reduce a good amount of calories that you take in per day.  The effect of drinking cold water could help you burn an extra 100 calories or more in a given day.

Chili Peppers as Metabolism Booster

Spicy foods tend to increase your metabolism, such as chili peppers. There's an ingredient known as capsaicin that's found in chili peppers.  That ingredient causes an increase in metabolism by activating brown fat at its most tissue, and brown fat appears to have the ability to use regular body fat as fuel to generate heat, which increases your metabolism.

Another benefit of capsaicin is that it can promote fat oxidation and support your metabolism while restricting calories, as a study shows. So it can be particularly beneficial to eat spicy food with chili peppers while you're on a diet to prevent or at least limit metabolic slowdown. 

Finally, as an extra benefit, capsaicin can also help you feel fuller.  If you have something spicy like chili peppers with dinner, it can reduce the temptation to eat after dinner, which will prevent nighttime eating and support both your sleep quality and fat loss. 

Do Cold Showers Boost Metabolism?

The last but not the least scientifically proven way to increase your metabolism is cold exposure, for example, cold showers. Cold showers are believed by many people to highly increase your metabolic rate. 

The effects may not be as dramatic as most people think. One of the major reasons why people think that taking a cold shower is so effective is because proponents of cold showers reported based on specific people within studies rather than the results of the entire study.

There was a study found that when healthy persons underwent two hours of cold exposure at 19 degrees Celsius or 66 degrees Fahrenheit, some of them increase their energy expenditure by hundreds of calories. 

Meanwhile, at the same time, others in this study did not have such a large spike in their metabolic rate, and this is a common phenomenon when it comes to research on the effects of a cold environment.

It is exciting to know that a guy exposed to cold temperatures burns an extra 400 calories per day.  That is a strong incentive for us to take a cold shower.  But the same study also shows that the average increase in metabolic rate was only 75 calories.  It is still not bad, although not entirely exciting. It simply shows that a cold environment affects people differently.

Nonetheless, it does seem true that with cold exposure people burn at least some more calories when their body is cold.  A quick one-minute cold shower probably does not do all that much.  However, if you do it every day.  The accumulated effect does add up.

Conclusion

So these are the seven ways to increase your metabolism, so you can burn more fat while you sleep. If you do a few of these tips, you'll be able to burn an extra 100s calories per day while at rest.  In the long run, it help you lose weight without additional efforts on exercising.