Vitamins Marketed as Metabolism Boosting…a Crock!!
It’s funny how I’m staring down all these recent heavy duty marketing campaigns for useless nutritional products that I can only reason that greed is the marketing driver. Case in point, Sunday morning TV commercial for the new Centrum (you know, the horse pill company)vitamin that improves your metabolism as a direct result of ingesting it.
You know that the operators of port-a-johns have to dump out the contents, and when they do and after washing it down to nothing there stands a small pile of hard matter, yes you guessed it, ‘horse pill’ vitamins. They do not get assimilated by the body due to the manufacturing process. If you are taking a multi vitamin(I would suggest it) that is one big pill, find a better source. Think soft gels and capsules and bioavailability!
Centrum multi vitamin boosting your metabolism? Absolutely NOT! Here’s the skinny on your metabolism. If you want to boost or rev up your metabolism, eat smaller but more frequent meals per day and build some lean body mass. Use your cardio workouts for calorie burning and oxidizing body fat , 2 good things, but they do not boost your metabolism directly. You need to weight(resistance) train 2-3 times a week consistently to increase lean body mass, which in turn burns more calories at rest. More muscle burns more calories at rest, add some muscle and now you burn even more calories. Now change up some of your cardio workouts to true, Interval Training as icing on the cake!
Quick cellular explanation; at the cellular level is your mitochondria(powerhouse of every cell), your goal is to increase the number of mitochondria. You do that by strength training(only activity that increases the # of mitochondria) which increases your lean body mass. If you have more mitochondria, you have improved resting metabolism. Mitochondria use oxygen and burns it at the cellular level, now how can I make my mitochondria burn it better….Interval Training, not slow steady state cardio. Run for 1 minute(work) at a 8-9 on the 10 scale(Ratings of Perceived Exertion), then jog(rest) at a 5-6 on the 10 scale for 2-3 minutes, repeat for a total duration of 30 minutes minimum. Now your mitochondria and extra mitochondria are burning oxygen at a higher level, thus boosting your metabolism.
For the avid exerciser who wants to get tested for their resting / exercise metabolic rate, VO2 Max, contact Chris Eschbach at Human Performance Lab, Meredith College – www.humanperformancetesting.com