Best Ways To Boost The Metabolism: Get Your Metabolism To Burn Hotter Than Hades

We all have a our own inherent fat-burning furnace--our metabolism. Whether we are naturally slender or tend to be a little softer all depends on whether our metabolism is naturally a glowing ember--or a raging inferno. But although our metabolism is in many ways handed down to us by fate--it depends on factors like age, gender, and ancestry--that doesn't mean there's nothing we can do to the fan the flames.

If we pare down all the scientifc language, metabolism simply means the rate at which the body burns energy in the form of calories. If you want to start boosting your metabolism, the first thing you need to do is calculate your body's RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate.) That will tell you how many calories your body would need to survive each day--if you spent each day at total rest. Then you can figure out how physically active you are and add calories accordingly. There's a high-tech equation for all this called the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which looks like this:

RMR=9.99w + 6.25s -4.92a + 166g-161

where w equals your weight in kilograms; s equals your height in centimeters; a equals age in years; and g stands for gender: 1 for males and 0 for females.

The best way to stoke up your metabolism is to strength train. Muscles are natural born calorie killers. They have a voracious appetite and demand a lot more energy than the other tissues in your body. If you take the time to build your muscles, they’ll repay the favor by melting fat all day, every day—even while you’re sleeping! A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research reported that women who lifted weights for an hour experienced a calorie “afterburn” effect that lasted 24 hours after the workout had ended.

Circuit training is the equivalent of drenching your metabolism in kerosene and then lighting a match. It activates all of the major muscle groups in your body at once and gets them all blazing through calories. A quick circuit training routine in the morning can keep your metabolism buzzing for the rest of the day. It’s a sweaty and heart-pounding workout, make no mistake. But it’s super fast and efficient—so you can get away with doing fewer crunches when you’re crunched for time.

When you circuit train, instead of resting between sets of an individual exercise, you do back-to-back sets of two or more different exercises with minimal or zero rest in between them. And in contrast to the more traditional exercise wisdom, which advises working different body parts on different days—like for example working your legs one day and your core the next— circuit training works all your muscles in one seamless workout session. For example, you might do a set of push-ups and then immediately move on to a set of lunges. When you’ve done one set of every move, you might rest briefly—and then you’ll start again from the beginning to hit all of those muscles again!

For a metabolism on the level of a nuclear explosion, do a minute or two of cardio—like jumping jacks or skipping rope—in between circuits.

Another great metabolism secret: interval cardio. Instead of doing long, grueling sessions of cardio at a moderate pace, try this: Do 1 minute of max effort--it should be difficult for you to speak. Then, do 2 minutes of an easy recovery pace. Repeat 6 times. If you're an advanced fitness buff, try 90 seconds max effort, 1 minute recovery. You can do this on the cardio machine of your choice. Interval training spikes the metabolism and targets abdominal fat especially.

It’s a myth that some foods “burn fat.” But every food does have something called a “thermic effect.” That’s a fancy way of saying that whenever you eat something, your body actually has to spend some calories in order to digest it. Thermic effect describes what percentage of the calories from a particular food will ultimately be burned up in the digestion process. You can sort of think of them like “free” calories. Of course, usually there will be plenty of surplus calories left over even after the thermic effect has burned a few of them. Lean protein has the best thermic effect: 30 %. So if you eat 100 calories of lean protein, like turkey or fish, 30 of those calories are automatically spent for you.

Chili peppers not only set your lips aflame, they can also do the same to your metabolism. According to the Journal of Nutritional Science and Vitaminology, the tingle from that devilish substance capsaicin triggers the flight-or-fight response in your sympathetic nervous system—and that temporarily spikes your metabolism rate by over 20%. So if you can take the heat, start eating more chilies.

Like any internal combustion engine, your metabolism needs oxygen to perform. And it gets that oxygen from your blood. But if you start running low on iron, your blood won’t be able to give your metabolism what it needs—and things can grind to a halt. So eat plenty of iron rich foods like broccoli, spinach, and legumes.

The very worst thing you can do to your metabolism is to crash diet. Your body isn’t going to realize that you’re deliberately starving yourself to look good in that bathing suit this summer. Your body isn’t going to realize there’s plenty of food in the fridge. Your body is just going to assume that a second ice age has begun, it’s going to panic, and it’s going to hold on to every little calorie for dear life.

If you don’t give your metabolism enough fuel, it will slow down to a lull. That’s why you can have perfect attendance scores at your Weight Watcher’s meeting, why you can keep a food journal that’s thicker than War and Peace—and still not see the scale budge. Always eat a good breakfast to jumpstart your metabolism every morning, and remember it’s better to eat lots of smaller meals throughout the day then to just eat a huge dinner. This keeps your metabolism steadily fueled.

Finally, hydrate yourself! All the chemical reactions that take place in the body--including the processing of calories--require water as a medium. And make it ice cold water--according to the experts at Webmd, drinking cold water can give your metabolism a slight boost.

So there you have it. Instead of working against your body with crash diets, work with your body. Stoke up a smoldering metabolism and you'll be well on your way to a smoking physique.