Want to Boost Your Metabolism? Try These 3 Things Today...

Yahoo Shine suggests eight ways to boost your metabolism and keep unwanted pounds from your waistline. Here are a few of them:

Do Intervals—Periodic fast-paced intervals raise your metabolic rate higher than a steady cardio workout can.

Drink Green Tea—A study found that people who drank three to five cups daily for three months cut 5 percent off their body weight.

Consider Caffeine—Coffee drinkers have a 16 percent higher metabolic rate -- but make sure you take it early to avoid sleeping problems.

Build More Muscle—Lean muscle mass boosts your metabolism and makes losing weight more easy.

Pick Up Heavier Weights—Use heavy weights at a very slow rate to break down your muscles. Your metabolism goes up while your body makes muscle repairs.

In related news, the results of an epidemiological showed that the metabolic syndrome, a condition associated with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, is related to a poor diet low in micronutrients.

Researchers examined the relationship between the metabolic syndrome and micronutrients such as folate, zinc and vitamins C, B12 and E. After adjusting for age and sex, they found significant relationships between the metabolic syndrome and two of the micronutrients, vitamins C and E.

A few of the techniques mentioned in the Yahoo article have merit, while others are dubious at best. For example, if your goal is to improve your metabolism,, I wouldn't give much attention to strategies like

• drinking cold water,
• loading up on caffeine or
• gorging at breakfast (which may actually be counterproductive for fat burning),

In all honesty, if you truly want to boost your metabolism, I recommend focusing on what really works, which I'll discuss in this comment. Sure, thermogenic foods (such as green tea for example) may help, but if you're really going to do it, why not maximize your chances of success rather than dallying around?

So, quit pretending quick fixes like tea or caffeine will do the work for you, and address the root instead. In this comment, I'll address three potent natural ways to optimize your metabolism:

1. Nutrition
2. Exercise, particularly high-intensity interval training and strength training (weight lifting)
3. Sleep

Eating This “Healthy” Food While Pregnant Can Lead to Infant Deafness, Blindness or Mental Retardation…

When a pregnant woman eats a fish-rich diet, the mercury content can reduce the beneficial effects fish oil has on her child's brain development. Babies exposed in the womb to higher methyl mercury levels scored lower on skills tests.

Of five nutrients tested, only the benefits of the fish oil DHA were affected by the mercury. The extent to which methyl mercury interferes with fish oil's brain benefits is uncertain.

Environmental Health News reports:

"The beneficial effects of eating fish during pregnancy on a baby's brain development are relatively well accepted. However, some fish can contain high levels of mercury ... Government agency advisories suggest women of childbearing years eat fish with low mercury levels as well as limit consumption of fish that contain high levels."

Click here to read the rest of Mercola.com article

Breaking News - Why Exercising at This Time of Day is FAR Better than Any Other Time...

A new study suggests that exercising in the morning, before eating, can significantly lessen the ill effects of a poor holiday diet.

Researchers recruited healthy, active young men and fed them a bad diet for six weeks. A group of them that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. What's more, they burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently.

According to the New York Times:

"... [W]orking out before breakfast directly combated the two most detrimental effects of eating a high-fat, high-calorie diet. It also helped the men avoid gaining weight."

Click to read the rest of the article