We've all heard it or even said it one time or another: "I'm not able to lose weight because of my metabolism." It's easy to blame our extra pounds on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let's examine the real importance of metabolism - and better yet, how to get the most "burn" for your buck by recharging your metabolism.

In the most fundamental sense, metabolism means all of the chemical and physical changes that take place inside the body's cells. Most often, though, metabolism refers to the process in which the body obtains and uses energy from what we eat, so it really does play an important function in weight loss and gain.

Not everyone is given the same metabolism, and our rates actually change during our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism isn't necessarily making excuses. Age affects metabolism, which will slow about 5% every 10 years after we turn 40, and by gender, as males have a tendency to burn more calories at rest than females, and by the amount of muscle mass you possess (more muscle generally means a higher rate of metabolism). Family history also affects metabolism, not to mention pregnancy, as well as whether a woman decides to breast-feed.

Regardless of all of the wild cards, the fact is that if your calorie intake surpasses your metabolism, excess energy will get housed in the body as fat. Though some of the factors affecting metabolic rate can't be changed, thankfully, there are ways to rev up the metabolism you are born with.

The first guideline is to consume the correct foods in the correct amounts. When you skip a meal, your body turns on starvation mode, which slows metabolism to keep calories, because it doesn't know when it will get food again. And when the metabolism slows down, so does your weight loss.

When you finally do eat food after having skipped a meal, instead of using the calories in the food you've just eaten, your body converts them to body fat to hold for the next "fast." To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 - 6 small meals spread evenly throughout the day and try to eat close to the same times each day. Most importantly, never skip a meal.

You can also step up your metabolic rate with exercise, including both aerobic routines and strength training. Aerobic activities, such as biking, dancing and running, use more calories in the short term, while strength training will create more muscle, which boosts metabolism and burns more calories in the long term - even when you are sitting still, muscle requires more calories to function than fat.

In fact, every pound of muscle burns 35 calories a day, while each pound of fat burns only 2 calories per day. Despite this, you might be surprised that the more weight you posses, the faster your metabolism is likely to run. Simply put, the extra weight forces your body work more to maintain its processes.

This is partly why it is nearly always easiest to lose weight when you begin dieting, and is more difficult as you continue because, if you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at an elevated rate, so that even a minor reduction in calories will bring about an immediate weight loss.

But what happens after that immediate loss, when a plateau occurs and motivation seems to go by the "weigh" side? Old compulsions and cravings can quickly come back, and when they do, do not neglect a valuable resource - weight loss hypnosis. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious so that, in essence, you can eliminate food cravings. When we study why we snack, realizing why weight loss hypnosis works so well becomes evident.

For a lot of us, snacking has become a habit - maybe you do it mindlessly when you are driving or watching TV or when you're under stress. Hypnosis can actually reprogram your thoughts to cut those associations, leaving you to drive or watch TV without experiencing the need to eat.

One of the most successful lose weight hypnosis methods for ending the snacking cycle is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, which relies on working with the unconscious and making it use the same thought processes that are creating your appetite, to eliminate your appetite. NLP takes many years of study and practical experience for a hypnotherapist to learn and master, but positive results can come very quickly and seem almost magical to a person who has always struggled with cravings.

NLP can be equally as imperative as motivation and exercise because, as you learned above, it can help ensure that you eat the right kinds of foods at the right times, and this is a key part of turbo-charging your metabolism. If you wish to keep your metabolism at full speed and ensure that all of hard work and exercise are not being wasted by giving in to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings once and for all.