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Raising your metabolism is the best way to burn body fat stores and the time honored way of doing this is with exercise. When it comes to losing weight quickly the most important thing you can do is raise your metabolism in order to burn more calories within a shorter period of time. Metabolism is controlled by thousands of separate chemical and hormonal reactions within the body. It is a function of genetics but it can be raised and lowered depending on many internal and external factors. Building lean muscle mass is one of the most time honored ways of increasing metabolism. In simple terms metabolism is the process your body goes through to turn calories into energy. Every bodily system and function requires energy and this energy comes from the calories we eat. Digestion and the breakdown of nutrients for cellular use is the first step in the metabolic process and in and of itself requires a good amount of energy. The body has several choices when it processes food; it can turn it into energy and use it for bodily repairs and maintenance or it stores it as fat for future use. The question then is how does exercise raise your metabolism? The answer lies in your muscles. Mitochondria are the cells that make up muscle and exercise is the way to increase the number of mitochondria. This is particularly true of weight training. By forcing the muscles to work by lifting weights you actually break them down. The muscles respond to this assault by repairing and rebuilding. During this process they become harder and stronger and the number of mitochondria increases. These organelles, the mitochondria, are an important part of the metabolism because they control the constant aerobic oxidation of fatty acids (fat burning) that occurs while we are at low levels of exertion. The aerobic oxidation forms a large part of our basic metabolic rate so any increase in mitochondrial mass will help raise the metabolism. Exercise also raises your muscle to fat ratio and because muscle is more metabolically active it will burn away excess body fat and help you lose weight. So if you want to lose weight start an exercise program that will raise your metabolism and get rid of that extra fat, even if it's just taking a walk everyday. For more information about how to raise your metabolism and for more information about how your metabolism works please click here.
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