Moderate exercise and healthy foods are the keys to effectively increasing your metabolism while recovering from anorexia. Changing your daily diet to incorporate six small, nutritious meals and eight glasses of water--along with building muscle through a healthy weekly exercise regimen--help your metabolic rate return to a normal level and keep you energized while staying healthy. Anorexia causes the metabolism to drop and the body to store fat because it's going into starvation mode. These steps can reverse the damage.
Instructions
1. Return to eating normally. Avoid starving your body, which actually causes your metabolism to slow down. Follow a healthy diet and balance your proteins, fats, sugars, and starches.
2. Eat six small meals a day. Following a bout with anorexia, it is important to spread your caloric intake over six smaller meals each day. This will keep your body sufficiently energized with nutrients, and it will maintain a higher metabolism than if you ate fewer meals.
3. Increase aerobic exercise. Walking, running, swimming and cycling all increase your metabolism while building muscle--which a post-anorexic body needs--and it stays elevated for hours afterward. Aim to exercise 30 to 60 minutes a day, three or four times a week, to keep up your metabolic rate. Do not overdo it.
4. Choose lean meats, fish, fruit, vegetables and whole grains. Proteins from fish and lean meat such as chicken and pork are ideal fuels for your body, making it metabolize foods more efficiently. A balanced diet helps restore metabolism lost due to anorexia.
5. Skip fatty foods and those loaded with refined sugar and simple carbohydrates. Fat is converted far too easily to fat in your body. And sugars and simple carbs only serve to spike blood sugar, and will in fact cause you to crash and become more tired.
6. Increase muscle mass. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even while at rest. Strength-training and cardiovascular exercises will build muscle and burn off fat. Fat stores are not conducive to increasing metabolism.
7. Drink eight 8 oz. glasses of water daily. Some studies have shown that regular water intake can help burn more calories. After drinking one or two cups, the body's metabolism speeds up and remains elevated for nearly a half-hour, plus the liquid keeps you hydrated.
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