Metabolic Overclocking

Other than inconvenient methods (such as amputation) or expensive ones (like liposuction), the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in.  And, as we all learned between naps in Biology 101, metabolism is the process of burning calories to do this, that, and the other.  Specifically what is being done to burn them doesn’t necessarily matter all that much. Obviously, some things have ancillary benefits in terms of developing aerobic capacity or strength — so choosing a calorie-burning activity that squares with your objectives is a good two-for-one deal.

However, there are a lot of Easter Eggs in the calorie-burning game; hidden ways that we can hack and overclock our metabolism to burn extra calories.

• EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption): This is exactly what it sounds like.  Just like your car’s engine or CPU heatsink are hot for a while after heavy use, so too will your metabolism remain elevated after exercise.  Unsurprisingly, the more intense your workout, the greater your EPOC recovery burn –  it takes longer to cool down and replenish oxygen and energy stores.  Some research has shown that, if you can break your workout into two sessions over the course of a day, you can enhance this benefit by getting two EPOC intervals as well.  Unfortunately for the potential perfect gaming acronym, Oxygen begins witn an “O.”
• Hidden Exercise: The little things, like taking the stairs, or parking at the far end of the lot, that add up over the course of the day.  They won’t necessarily induce EPOC (unless you’re in the habit of dashing up the stairs, or have to sprint across the parking lot due to a sudden rainstorm or Velociraptor attack), but ten or twenty calories here or there will nibble away at unwanted weight.
• Fat-Burning Foods: There’s a small kernel of truth to the stories about stuff like celery, green tea, and cayenne pepper helping you lose weight by, essentially, having a negative caloric value.  However, it’s not the sort of thing that will, all by itself, produce much in the way of meaningful results (for instance, switching to green tea instead of coffee or black tea will burn about an extra seven calories a day; celery takes a few more calories to digest than you get out of it). Spicy food, like cayenne pepper or other similar capsacin-rich stuff, will induce that familiar heat as your body reacts to it, and this effectively mimics mild exertion or EPOC as far as “warming the body takes energy, and so does cooling it back off.”
• Fat-Loss / Metabolism-Boost Products: Here’s where the advertizing juggernaut we’re all familiar with lurks.  Do they work? Results vary.  As with anything else, there’s a lot of variety in the market, and some things will be better than others, or work better for one person than another.  How do they work? Generally, in two ways (and sometimes employing both).  On the one hand, they commonly include compounds that will speed up the metabolism — B complexes, green tea extract, raspberry extract, exotic or mundane stimulants.  On the other, some will include a second feature — an appetite suppressant (usually caffeine).

So, while none of these are a silver bullet or have the immediate oomph of a stim pack or haste potion, there are a lot of things we can do to augment our regular caloric burn and buff that metabolism.

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