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We've all heard it or even said it before: "I can't lose weight because of my metabolism." It's convenient to blame our unwanted weight on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let's examine the real importance of metabolism - and better yet, how you can get the most "burn" for your buck by recharging your metabolism.

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

Not everyone is given the same metabolism, and our rates actually fluctuate over the course of our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism is not 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 have (more muscle generally means a higher rate of metabolism). Genetics also impacts metabolism, not to mention pregnancy, as well as whether a woman decides to breast-feed.

Despite all of the wild cards, the simple fact is that if your calorie intake exceeds your metabolism, excess energy will get housed in the body as fat. Though some of the aspects affecting metabolic rate can't be altered, thankfully, there are methods to rev up the metabolism you're born with.

The first guideline is to eat the correct foods in the correct amounts. When you miss a meal, your body goes into starvation mode, which slows metabolism to keep calories, because it doesn't know when it will be fed 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 burning the calories in the food you have just had, your body converts them to body fat to keep for the next "fast." To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 - 6 smaller meals over the course of the day and aim 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 workouts and weight training. Aerobic activities, such as biking, dancing and running, use more calories in the short term, while weight training will create more muscle, which boosts metabolism and burns more calories in the long term - even when you're resting, muscle requires more calories to function than fat.

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

This is partially why it's almost always easiest to lose weight when you start dieting, and is harder as you go along because, when you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at a high rate, so that even a slight decrease in calories will yield 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 cravings and compulsions can suddenly return, and when they do, do not overlook a valuable resource - lose weight hypnosis. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious mind so that, in essence, you can eliminate food cravings. When we look at why we snack, recognizing why weight loss hypnosis works so well becomes clear.

For many of people, snacking has become a habit - perhaps you do it without thinking when you're watching TV or driving or when you are under stress. Hypnosis can actually reprogram your thoughts to stop those associations, leaving you to watch TV or drive without having the need to eat.

One of the most successful weight loss hypnosis methods for ending the snacking cycle is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, which relies on collaborating 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 rapidly and seem almost magical to someone who has always experienced cravings.

NLP can be just as important as motivation and exercise because, as you learned above, it can help make sure that you eat the right kinds of foods at the right times, and this is an important ingredient for turbo-charging your metabolism. If you wish to keep your metabolism at full speed and make sure that all of hard work and exercise aren't being wasted by yielding to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings once and for all.