Metabolic Habit #2

July 2009

by Morella Devost

Two weeks ago I shared the first of my six metabolic habits: never eat late at night or within three hours of going to bed. Here is the second habit for you to work on.

Habit #2: Exercise first thing in the morning or at least two hours after eating a meal

Exercise is the natural way to accelerate your metabolism. It gets your heart pumping blood quicker, distributes more oxygen throughout your body, and helps carry away waste from your tissues by stimulating your lymphatic system. Exercise is also fundamental for regulating hormones and reversing diabetes, reducing cholesterol and preventing cardiovascular disease.

Now, even though exercising at any time of day is good, you get the most benefit from it if you exercise first thing in the morning. Here are a few reasons why:

Your metabolic rate begins to rise as soon as the sun rises and continues to rise until noon (when the sun is highest). Exercising in the morning supports this natural rhythm and your body will flow more easily with it. If you're a caffeine junkie or if you are not going to bed early enough, it may be hard to get going at first. But think of this, most animals in nature are most active during the first few hours of the day.
In the morning you have been fasting for a few hours and are more likely to burn fat for fuel than if you just had a meal. Some people need to have a bite or two before a workout, and that's OK, but the smaller the better and ideally nothing more than a handful of nuts or a small piece of fruit.
If you can't exercise first thing in the morning then try to do it after allowing 2+ hours to digest your previous meal. That way you will also have a better chance of training your body to switch from burning sugar (from meals) to burning fat.

A healthy metabolism is one that can effectively switch from burning sugar to burning fat. Unfortunately, most people don't realize that at any given time your body is either primarily burning sugar or primarily burning fat, but never both at the same time. Over time, due to over eating, lack of exercise and eating too much sugar, the body becomes used to burning sugar for fuel and slowly "forgets" how to burn fat. Habit #2 is one critical way to retrain your body to burn fat.

Don't miss the third habit in our next e-newsletter in a couple of weeks.

If you have any questions about your diet, your health, weight loss or detoxification, please do not hesitate to contact us. We'd be happy to help.