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Burn calories without breaking a sweat: use these seven tips to make your metabolism work overtime even while you're resting

Men's Fitness, April, 2003 by Andrea Platzman

While you may think of your metabolism simply in terms of how many calories it will let you get away with eating each day, it is in fact nothing less than the engine of life. In addition to its fat-storing and fat-searing functions, your metabolism also maintains basic duties such as keeping your lungs inhaling and exhaling, your heart beating, your kidneys filtering waste, and your core body temperature on an even keel.

Here's how the man in the white coat sums it up: "Metabolism is the body's process of combining nutrients with oxygen to release the energy required to power our bodies," says J.T. Kearney, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist from Golden, Colo. "Usually measured in calories, it varies from person to person." In other words, some guys (actually, precious few) can pound cheeseburgers and fries and still maintain their abs, while others seem to bloat at the mere sight of a Krispy Kreme.

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Rather than cursing the genes you were born with, however, you can learn how to make your metabolism work in your favor. You probably know that exercise speeds up your metabolism during the short period you're actually working out. But you may not know that there are several ways you can burn calories without even breaking a sweat. With your best interests always in mind, we've come up with seven strategies that will keep you melting calories between workouts--which means even less fat buildup.

1 NEVER SKIP MEALS

Like many time-pressed guys, you may often skip breakfast or lunch. Or between-meal snacks. This practice leads to one of two scenarios, neither of them a winner: 1) You become so ravenously hungry that by 10:30 a.m. you binge on Ding-Dongs or whatever else you can scrounge from the nearest vending machine; or 2) sensing that it will never be fed again, your body resorts to its evolutionary response to a condition it perceives as starvation--fat deposition, in your stomach area, your ass, your chin and so on. While the latter reaction may have been a useful tactic during the Paleolithic Era, when your ancestors killed and ate a wooly mammoth once every seven days and starved the rest of the time, today it only results in a slowed metabolism designed to conserve energy and make fat loss harder and harder.

The solution is to eat like a horse, not a bear. Horses graze on small amounts of food throughout the course of a day, and subsequently have lean, muscular frames. Bears, however, gorge mountains of food sporadically, and thus carry far more body fat. (Sure, a bear can beat a horse in a fight, but the horse gets to be a stud a lot more often.) The point? Five or six meals spaced throughout the day are easier to digest, won't send your body into starvation mode, and will speed up your metabolism and help you stay lean.

Here are some ideal quick and healthy small meals:

* Half of a whole-wheat bagel with a tablespoon of peanut butter; or 1 1/2 cups of oatmeal, a banana, and two or three scrambled egg whites.

* Fresh vegetables with hummus.

* Nonfat cottage cheese and fresh fruit.

* A basic shake made of protein powder, fresh fruit, and nonfat milk, soy milk or water.

* Half a baked potato, a skinless chicken breast, three cups of salad, and plenty of water-bearing vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers.

2 HYDRATE WITH COLD WATER

Water for your body is like oil for your car. You need water for all bodily processes, including digestion, waste excretion, circulation and even breathing. Dehydration can lead to sugar cravings, fatigue, and an ill temper marked by edginess and cloudy thinking. As well, dehydration slows down fat-burning significantly and prevents the muscles from taking advantage of the carbs you're eating.

The usual recommendation is to drink 64 ounces (eight cups) of water daily, and more when you exercise--but the more ice-cold water you drink, the more calories you burn. "Drinking eight ounces of cold water can burn off an additional 9.25 calories as compared to room-temperature water," adds Kearney.

3 EAT PROTEIN FREQUENTLY

The process of eating and digesting food can burn a significant amount of calories (especially when you're grazing and not gorging), and protein boasts the greatest food-generated calorie burn.

"A protein-based meal will elicit a thermic effect that is close to 30 percent of the total calories itself," explains Jack Groppel, Ph.D., co-founder of LGE Performance Systems in Orlando. This means that if you have a protein-based meal of 600 calories, you'll burn 180 calories just by eating it. This is largely due to digestive processes as well as the extra energy the liver requires to assimilate and synthesize the amino acids in protein.

Good protein sources include:

* Fish and shellfish

* Poultry (skinless, white-meat portions)

* Eggs (preferably egg whites)

* Low-fat dairy foods such as cottage cheese and yogurt

* Small amounts of lean beef

* Game meats such as buffalo, elk and ostrich

* Soy foods such as tofu

While extra protein can help boost your metabolism, don't go overboard: A protein-only diet is difficult to stick to and is nutritionally unsound. Just remember to include protein in your frequent meals. If you're trying to put on muscle, an easy guideline is to aim for one gram of protein per pound of body weight a day.

Burn calories without breaking a sweat: use these seven tips to make your metabolism work overtime even while you're resting

Men's Fitness, April, 2003 by Andrea Platzman

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