As we get older, our metabolism naturally slows down. In fact, recent research has suggested that our metabolic rate starts to slow as soon as we hit 25 years old, slowing by around 5-10% every decade.
A slow metabolism combined with the struggle to lose pregnancy weight are the weight loss woes of any mum. 
Lack of time to exercise, difficulty in finding healthy meals that the whole family will eat as well as tempting children’s treats can make it difficult to shed the kilos. Our 28 day weight loss challenge is designed to help kick start your metabolism and support your healthy weight loss.
Here are 6 top tips to help boost your metabolism
1.Add lean muscle
Lean muscle is one of the most important things in the fight against fat loss – having just 2.5-5kg lean muscle mass, which isn’t that much, can help you to burn off an additional 100 calories per day – without making any other changes to your life.
Exercising will boost your calorie burning power even further, so increase your lean muscle mass by doing a little weight training every other day. You don’t need to do too much, just 10-15 minutes here and there and you will start to see a difference.
2.Get enough sleep
Lack of sleep causes a sluggish and slow metabolism at rest – when you are just sitting on the sofa or eating your dinner. The slower your metabolism at rest, the more difficult you’ll find it to shed the kilos – as up to 70% of our calorie burning happens at rest. Try and get at least 8 hours of good quality sleep per night in order to give your metabolism a fighting chance in the morning.
3. Eat little and often 
When you eat, you stimulate your metabolism – so therefore the more frequently you eat, the more your metabolism gets a quick boost. This goes against the idea that you should eat fewer calories infrequently to lose weight.
Starving yourself will cause your body to lay down fat stores to use as energy in the future as it will worry about where the next meal is coming from. Eating often reassures your body that food is not scarce, meaning that your metabolism adequately uses the calories that you put into it, rather than laying down those calories as fat stores.
For the best results, you need to eat well – healthy snacks and a range of lean protein, fibre rich fruits and vegetables, complex whole grain carbohydrates and a little bit of heart healthy fat and calcium will help to boost your metabolism, thus helping you to shift those excess kilos.
4. Take a fatty acid supplement
EPA and DHA, two fatty acids that are only found in fish oil, could actually have the potential to boost metabolism by a rather large amount – up to 400 calories per day. This works by boosting enzymes that promote fat burning and by decreasing the levels of enzyme that cause you to lay down fat stores. Researchers recommend that you take a supplement that contains at least 300mg of EPA and DHA in total. This is why we include of these natural supplements in our 28 day weight loss challenge.
5. Move more 
Even if you don’t think that you have time to exercise, you can! We’re not saying that you have to start an intense gym regime – simply moving more will help to boost your metabolism. When you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, run up and down the stairs a few times. If you usually sit down on the bus or train, stand up – it uses more calories. Read our tips on how to get more incidental exercise into your day. The more you move, the more calories you’ll burn off – it’s as simple as that.
6. Join the Metabolism Boosting Challenge
The September 28 Day Challenge is the METABOLISM BOOSTING theme. All recipes have been designed with ingredients to BOOST your metabolism so this is the perfect Challenge to kick start your weight loss, energy and weight loss – take part now
