Boost Your Metabolism

Jen Ator

Speed up your metabolism to lose weight now

• when you roll out of bed
 | 
• when you're at work
 | 
• when you go food shopping
 | 
• When you work out
 | 
• when you get home

when you roll out of bed
• Eat (a good) breakfast
• Sip java
• Guzzle your water cold

How to Increase Metabolism

Here's a secret: slaving away inside your body—right this minute—is your very own personal trainer working tirelessly to help you burn calories and shed fat. It's called your metabolism, and it's the sum of everything your body does. Each time you eat, enzymes in your body's cells break down the food and turn it into energy that keeps your heart beating, your mind thinking, and your legs churning during a grueling workout. A fast metabolism means more calories burned. The more you burn, the easier it is to drop pounds. And get this—you can make increase you metabolism so it works harder, a lot harder, 24 hours a day.
To some degree, our bodies hum along at a preset speed determined by gender and genetics, but there's still plenty of wiggle room. "You have a huge amount of control over your metabolic rate," says John Berardi, Ph.D., C.S.C.S., author of The Metabolism Advantage. "You can't affect how many calories it takes to keep your heart beating, but you can burn an extra 500 to 600 calories a day by exercising properly and eating right." And by making a few changes to your routine.
To make those changes simpler, we enlisted the help of leading experts and came up with a round-the-clock, turn-up-the-burn plan complete with new moves that will throw that slow metabolism into overdrive.