You cut calories and you exercise. You do exactly what you have been shown and ensure that your calories in are greater than your calories out, producing a daily calorie deficit. You should be losing fat. But if you aren’t then perhaps you’re still not paying attention to an often forgotten factor of fat loss – your metabolism.

Your metabolism dictates the rate at which your body burns fat. 98% of the population has ultimate control over the food, exercise, and lifestyle choices they make every day which have a significant impact on their metabolism.

If you starve yourself (instead of following a sensible eating plan) and remain sedentary then your metabolism will slow down. If your metabolism slows down, it means the rate at which you burn fat calories will be less. And that means ineffective weight loss.

For every day that you continue to slow your metabolism with unhealthy lifestyle choices, you get further away from fat loss. To help, I’ve put together my top 10 tips on how to increase metabolism.

1. Eat 5 to 6 Small Meals Per Day– The first tip is going to sound counter-productive, but it cannot be stressed enough, you have to eat regularly to avoid energy spikes, hunger pangs and fat storage. The body is a finely tuned machine that tries to work out your eating patterns and calculate what calories need to be stored as fat for future energy requirements and what calories need to be burnt immediately as the primary energy source. In simple terms, by eating small regular meals you train your body to know that calories are coming in on a consistent basis and therefore there is no need to store energy as fat for later use.

2. Break Exercise Down Into Two Short Sessions – One of the keys to increase metabolism is to do cardiovascular exercise in the morning and strength building exercise in the evening. This sounds like a lot but actually it is very simple to achieve and doesn’t need to be arduous. The morning exercise could and should be as simple as stepping out of your door and doing a brisk 30 minute walk or run around your neighborhood before having breakfast. The strength building doesn’t need to take longer than 12 minutes and only needs to be a combination of push-ups and other body weight exercises done in the comfort of your home 2 hours before bed time.

3. Increase Protein In Your Meals – Make sure to increase the amount of protein you consume in your meals as protein helps to control insulin spikes in the body. Insulin spikes lead to increased hunger pangs and uneven distribution of energy levels. Increasing protein is important to build fat burning lean muscle and to increase metabolic rate.  Eating protein dense foods such as lentils or kidney beans will keep you feeling full between meals.

4. Get Adequate Sleep – Ideally you need to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night. Research suggests that a lack of sleep is likely to increase the level of the cortisol hormone that increases hunger. In addition it can increase blood sugar levels that interfere with the body’s ability to metabolise carbohydrates which in turn leads to higher insulin levels and more fat storage. Research into obesity and weight problems suggest that getting adequate sleep is as important as eating right and taking exercise.

If you believe your metabolism has slowed down due to improper dieting or lifestyle, then follow our tips on how to increase metabolism and start your journey to effective weight loss by burning fat and building lean muscle. You have the power to control your metabolism and your metabolism has the power to control your body shape!

5. Green Vegetables – One of the best metabolism boosting foods are green leafy vegetables such as spinach, broccoli and cabbage. These are great staple foods to add to your diet because they are nutrient rich and full of fiber and iron. Green leafy vegetables are not calorie dense and in some schools of thought it is suggested that more energy is used in digesting these vegetables than they contain which makes them calorie negative.

6. Carbohydrates – Carbohydrates are often times seen as the weight loss enemy but that’s only half true. You shouldn’t be eating too many carbohydrates, but that is not a call to omit them completely. If you’re going to eat carbs, make sure that you look for wild rice, steal cut oats, and whole grains whenever possible. Avoid eating highly processed foods like white bread, white rice, and cereals that have more sugar than fiber content. To keep it simple avoid all white carbohydrates and only eat other carbohydrates within 1 hour of finishing exercise.

7. Drinks – Never drink calories! Drinking soda such as Coke and 7-up is a recipe to stay fat for life. Instead drink water to satisfy basic thirst and ease hunger pangs (water is considered to be calorie negative when bearing in mind the energy needed to process it). Water is a natural appetite suppressant that banishes bloat as it flushes out sodium and toxins. Coffee is known to stimulate the nervous system and increase metabolism as is Green Tea (green tea is also rich in antioxidants that aid in longevity).

Remember that these foods are not only healthy but they actively help to increase metabolism. Make food preparation easy by buying ready prepared foods (such as pre-cut fresh vegetables) from your local supermarket and mix and match 5 or 6 meals that you can eat on a continuing basis to make shopping easier and keep your costs down (there is nothing worse than complicated diets that call for ever changing and expensive meal plans on a daily basis). And never miss breakfast, but more about that in part 3 of how to increase metabolism – top 10 tips.

The body will eventually adapt to an increased metabolism, recognize the new regime and then work out how to store fat within the new framework. Once we know how to increase metabolism we then need to train our body to maintain it’s newly found metabolic state. We can easily do this by altering the intensity of our physical activity and allowing for calorie spikes once per week.

8. Exercise With Intensity – If you want to burn fat for longer and ensure your metabolism stays supercharged then you need to vary the intensity of your physical activity. This can be as simple as including fast running or fast walking intervals to your cardiovascular exercise and only allowing a 30 second break between sets when doing your evening strength exercises. The idea is to get your heart rate pumping, take a short rest and then resume again before your heart rate is fully recovered. Exercising in this way provides the metabolism with a massive stimulus and ensures your body burns fat even after your exercise has finished.

9. Enjoy Cheat Days – Cheat days is perhaps the wrong term because there is nothing about them that is cheating. You simply need to have one day per week where you eat whatever you like. The body needs this caloric spike in order to shock it out of storing fat and by doing so you are sending your body the message that excess calories will be coming in on a regular basis. For any weight loss or weight maintenance plan to work in the long term you need to have cheat days or you will go insane. No one should deny themselves the foods they love for the rest of their lives and nor do they need to. Fall off the diet wagon once per week and you will stay slim for life.

10. Consistency Is King – The most crucial aspect of how to increase metabolism is to be consistent in what you do.  That means consistently taking physical activity, consistently eating the right metabolic foods and consistently going crazy once per week on your cheat days. We all have down days where we don’t feel like exercising and that is fine. When you have those days at least try to do something. Go for a 15 minute walk instead of a 30 minute walk or do 10 push-ups instead of 20.  You will feel great that you maintained consistency even on a down day when you weren’t feeling your best. As with all things in life, what we do the most of is what we will bear the fruit of and that applies to increasing your metabolism and burning fat.

The 10 tips in this series can help anyone get rid of stubborn fat and start seeing lean muscle replace it.

Your metabolism controls how the body reacts to food and it is your metabolism that ultimately decides how much fat you burn. Increase your metabolism today and start reaping the rewards for life.