The number of calories you need to survive depends on many factors such as age, gender, muscle mass, activity and stress. All of these make the metabolism either sluggish or not working properly. While many people enjoy a fast and active metabolism, there are people who do not have this “superpower” and just looking at a slice of pizza puts on weight. Fortunately, we can speed up our metabolism depending on the foods we include in our diet.
Certain foods, especially greens, have a perfect combination of beneficial nutrients for improving metabolism. Greens are rich in iron and magnesium, too spinach is one of the best choices for this, being delicious and versatile, because you can eat it both raw and cooked. 30 grams of spinach contains 36% of the daily requirement of iron and 37% of the daily requirement of magnesium.
How spinach and iron- and magnesium-rich foods affect metabolism and weight loss
Iron is essential in the body and affects the energy level of metabolism. If you have low iron, you most likely feel tired most of the time. One way low iron affects you is by interfering with the effects on your thyroid hormones. Thus you face the lack of energy and appetite.
Following a study, researchers from Turkey treated 21 women with iron deficiency. After six months, the study participants significantly reduced their body mass index and number of kilograms, suggesting that low iron levels can increase metabolic rate.
In turn, magnesium is an essential mineral for metabolism and energy production. When there is not enough in the body, the body cannot convert the food consumed into energy. A 2014 meta-analysis shows an inverse relationship between magnesium and metabolic syndrome. The more magnesium the participants consumed, the less prone they were to associated diseases metabolic syndrome such as high cholesterol, hypertension, insulin resistance and obesity.
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