Ten Tips to Boost Up Your Metabolism and Fire Up Your Weight Loss

1. Unhealthy dieting drops your resting metabolic rate, making it difficult to keep weight off. Crash diets also result in a higher percentage of muscle loss. Hence, it is important to combine exercise along with healthy dieting. Lose weight by reducing intake of calories, as well as burning up calories as well.

2. Eating more protein can boost up your metabolism, since your body uses more energy to process it. Aim for about 1-1.5 gm of protein per kg of body weight in a day, depending upon your activity level. Have 4-5 meals in a day, each meal supplying about 20-25% of your daily protein requirement.

3. Adding a kilo of muscle, increases metabolism by 4-6%, which means you burn extra calories everyday. Weight training is the best way to gain muscle mass. Hence, include weight training in your exercise program and target larger muscle groups. Also include exercises that combine upper and lower-body movements, because they help you to build more lean muscles.

4. If you have limited time, exercise at a higher intensity for the shorter time. This results in a post-exercise boost in you resting metabolism rate that is larger, and lasts longer.

5. Drinking the right amount of water can help in burning extra calories since all the body's chemical reactions including metabolism depends upon water. Dehydration can result in decreased rate of metabolism.

6. Studies have suggested that drinking ice-cold glasses of water could help you burn extra calories in a day as compared to plain water. Hence adding those extra ice-cubes to your beverages can help in boosting your metabolism.

7. Eating hot, spicy food can rev up your metabolism. Capsaicin, the bioactive compound found in chili peppers is known to enhance satiety and reduce hunger besides boosting up your metabolism to some extent.

8. Eating fibrous fruits like grapefruit and orange before your main meal can also help you lose weight, though it does not increase your metabolism per se. That is because the fiber and the water in the fruit fills you up on lower calories and hence you eat lesser during your main meal.

9. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and should be heaviest. A heavy breakfast, early in the morning can really kick-start your metabolism and you end up burning more calories during the day. Do not skip breakfast under any circumstances.

10. Remember, there are no magic potions or pills for losing weight overnight. A healthy diet combined with right amount of exercise can help you to boost up your metabolism, in the process helping you to lose or maintain your weight in a healthy manner.