Here’s a question you’ve probably thought about before: Does your metabolism slow down with age? Today, I want to tackle this age-old question and show you how to boost your metabolism.

So, the answer is technically yes. But maybe not in the way you’d think. And here’s the good news: a great deal of your metabolism can be controlled.

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Why your metabolism slows down

Your metabolism slows down as you age for several reasons:

You become less active.
You lose muscle mass.
Your body is no longer growing.
Your sleep diminishes and or the quality suffers.
And of course, internal organs age and become less efficient.

We can’t do anything about a couple of these things, but when it comes to improving your metabolism, there’s a lot we can control.

And today, I want to talk about 5 ways to boost your metabolism.

Seven ways to boost your metabolism

So, let’s talk about a few of the ways you can improve your metabolism that are within your control.

Sleep more

Sleep plays a big role in improving and maintaining your metabolism. In fact, there are multiple ways your sleep directly impacts your weight. Poor sleep hygiene and a lack of sleep is a sure way to slow your metabolism.

And research has actually shown that our sleep quality gets worse with age. Make sure you have an ideal sleep environment, a schedule in place, and aim for 7-9 hours of sleep each night.

In addition to the number of hours, you want to focus on the quality of your sleep as well. If you want to boost your metabolism, then you need to make sleep a priority.

Read my post on Habits for Better Sleep to point you in the right direction.

Avoid diets

It seems counterintuitive, but diets have a damaging effect on your metabolism. They simply don’t work. If you want to boost your metabolism you have to think long-term.

And the longer you restrict calories, the more stressed your body becomes.

It thinks you’re in a famine state, so cortisol rises and you are in fat storage mode. Stay here for too long and thyroid function can also be affected. A hypothyroid state makes it much more difficult to lose weight and burn fat until it’s corrected.

Diets are a short-term fix for something that has been in the making for many years. So, if you want to improve your metabolism, give yourself a healthy, sustainable solution, then you should avoid diets.

Avoid alcohol

Your brain must prioritize tasks – it doesn’t work as well if it tries to do too much at once. We all like to think we can multi-task, but I think we can all admit we do better when we focus on one thing at a time.

Your metabolism is the same way. And when you consume alcohol, your body prioritizes it above everything else you consume.

When we consume alcohol, the liver urgently tries to process it. As a result, alcohol takes center stage in your gut, ahead of anything else you’ve eaten, and hinders your metabolism.

Be more active

It’s no surprise that people tend to become less active with age. “Going outside to play” becomes a thing of the past, and if your hobbies don’t involve physical activity it’s hard to be active.

But exercise and physical activity are an important part of improving your metabolism. A daily walk is a good place to start. Find a path or route nearby that allows you to get 30 minutes of walking in each day.

Build muscle

Muscle requires your body to burn more calories to maintain. If you’re not actively working to build muscle you’ll begin losing it.

In fact, you begin to lose as much as 3% to 5% of your muscle mass per decade after the age of 30. Being more active, as I mentioned above, and adopting a simple resistance training routine a couple of times each week will help you maintain your muscle mass.

Drink coffee

Coffee provides many benefits. And one of those is that it boosts your metabolism.

Research has shown that coffee can increase your metabolism by up to 20 percent. A 2014 study found that athletes who drank coffee prior to exercise burned about 15 percent more calories.

If you choose to drink coffee, make sure it doesn’t interfere with your sleep.

Caffeine has a half-life of 5 hours. That means half of it will remain in your system after 5 hours.

Make sure to drink your coffee early enough in the day so it’s no longer in your system when you go to sleep.

Eat avocados

I recently found another reason to love avocados: they help improve your metabolism!

And it makes sense: with 10 grams of fiber per cup avocados are a great source of fiber which means they impact the microbes in the gut.

So, in addition to helping you feel full and reducing blood cholesterol concentration, they also influence the gut microbes, and the metabolites the microbes produce.

Recently, researchers discovered that people who eat avocados each day as part of a meal had a greater abundance of gut microbes that break down fiber and produce metabolites that support gut health.

These microbial metabolites are compounds the microbes produce that influence your health and support your overall metabolism.

They studied two groups in this research: those who ate avocados and those who didn’t.

The crazy thing about it is that the group who ate avocados, even though they were consuming more calories, lost more fat than the control group who wasn’t eating avocados.

Conclusion

There are a couple of things that are out of our control when it comes to our metabolism: we can’t prevent aging and at a certain point, our body stops growing. It’s just a part of life.

But thankfully, there’s a lot we can control. Being more aware of these five metabolism-boosting habits will help you maintain a healthy weight and stay healthier overall.

If you want to improve your metabolism just focus on one of them at a time. So, which habit are you going to start working on today?

How to Boost Your Metabolism Even as You Age