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

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.

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.

4 SPICE IT UP

Certain spices can give your weight loss an added zing. "Ginger, cloves, cayenne, coriander, bay leaves and dry mustard have all demonstrated a thermogenic, or fat-burning, effect, thus raising metabolism," says Ann Louise Gittleman, M.S., C.N.S., author of The Fat Flush Plan. Another positive effect of consuming hot herbs is that they stimulate thirst, so you'll drink more (we're talking ice water, not margaritas).

Try sprinkling some cinnamon on your next nonfat latte. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have shown that just a quarter of a teaspoon to one teaspoon of cinnamon taken with food can help boost metabolism twentyfold. This extraordinary spice makes fat cells much more responsive to insulin, the hormone that regulates sugar metabolism.

5 CHEW GUM

Believe it or not, you can actually burn some extra calories by chewing gum. "Besides being good for your breath--especially if you eat a lot of protein--researchers at the Mayo Clinic have found that chewing gum will burn an additional 11 calories per hour," says Dan Benardot, Ph.D., R.D., author of Nutrition for Serious Athletes.

It's estimated that if you chew noncaloric gum during waking hours, and if you do not make any changes to your eating or exercise routines, you can lose 10 pounds of body fat in a year.

6 FIDGET FURIOUSLY

You re stuck in traffic, waiting in line, or even waiting online. All of those predicaments may put you into a funk, until you realize you've been presented with a fat-burning opportunity. "It has been shown that people who fidget or who have more involuntary muscle movements increase the rate of caloric burn compared to people who have less involuntary muscle movements," says Benardot. But we're not talking about the kind of natural fidgeting that accompanies aggravation or anydety. We're talking about self-aware fidgeting, as crazy as that sounds.

Scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., believe that conscious voluntary activities--such as changing posture, stretching your arms above your head, and getting up from your seat--are responsible for burning many more calories than unconscious fidgeting. The researchers have termed this type of movement NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) and estimate that it zaps an additional 300 to 800 calories a day. It's a no-brainer. If you have an opportunity to move, move.

7 BREATHE

Going outside and getting some fresh air several a day might shrink your gut as well as clear your head. Some experts believe that better breathing can ultimately help your weight-loss endeavors.

"Learning how to breathe more naturally and efficiently, the way our bodies were designed to breathe, can have a powerful influence on our metabolism and overall sense of well-being," says Robert Fried, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Hunter University in New York City. "Healthy, natural breathing makes us feel better physically, emotionally and mentally, and thus has a beneficial influence on the quality of our exercise, the way we look and feel about ourselves, the kinds and quantities of food we eat, and our levels of energy. All of these have a powerful influence on metabolism."

Try power yoga for metabolism-boosting exercise combined with an emphasis on proper breathing. Bring plenty of water to class, as this is not the relaxing brand of yoga you may be familiar with.

BRICKS IN YOUR METABOLIC WALL

Your metabolism is actually made up of several components, each one responsible for burning a percentage of your daily caloric intake:

* Dietary thermogenesis refers to how many calories you expend eating and digesting food. This effect burns 10 percent of everything you eat.

* Adaptive thermogenesis is the fancy name for daily activities such as fidgeting during a boring meeting, using the bathroom, and walking to your car. This accounts for another 10 percent of your daily calories.

* Then there's exercise. Your sweaty efforts take care of between 15 percent and 30 percent of total calories, depending on how hard and long you work out.

* Your resting metabolic rate is probably the most significant facet of metabolism. RMR refers to how many calories you burn just sitting there reading this article. "Your RMR utilizes 60 to 75 percent of your total metabolism," says exercise physiologist J.T. Kearney, Ph.D. "Basically, you burn three times as many calories doing absolutely nothing compared to doing what you choose to do purposely.'" In other words, you burn more calories in the 23 hours a day you're not exercising than in the hour you spend at the gym.

Several factors influence your RMR: genetics, age, gender and, most importantly, your muscle-to-fat ratio, otherwise known as "body composition." Your RMR already uses up several hundred calories a day, but your goal is to increase that number as much as possible.

SUPERCHARGE YOUR METABOLISM

"To really boost your metabolism, aerobic activity is necessary," says John Jay Wooldridge, a Reebok master trainer. He recommends doing at least 20 minutes, three to five times a week. Beginners should aim for 55 percent to 85 percent of their maximum heart rate; cardio veterans should shoot for 75 percent to 85 percent of their MHR. (To determine your approximate MHR, subtract your age from 220.)

While cardio offers a valuable path to spiking metabolism, "the biggest impact on metabolic rate is the proportion of muscle mass per unit of body weight," says Dan Benardot, Ph.D., R.D., author of Nutrition for Serious Athletes. Since energy is required to maintain muscle mass, the more muscle you have, the more calories your body will burn. Muscle is eight times more metabolically active than fat. To be precise, you'll burn about 50 calories a day for every one pound of muscle mass you're carrying. Wooldridge recommends doing a minimum of two resistance-training sessions a week.

YOUR PERSONAL PLAN

Weight loss is a simple matter of burning more calories than you eat. But what if you want to know how many calories you burn in one day? Try the BodyGem by HealtheTech, a handheld portable device that measures your resting metabolic rate, which accounts for as much as 75 percent of the calories you burn a day. (Once you figure out your RMR, it's easy to compute what you expend through exercise and activity to then find your daily caloric-burn total.) The seven-to-nine-minute test is administered by simply having you breathe into the device through a disposable mouthpiece. Once you have a measurement, you carl create a personalized weight-loss plan. For a quick-and-dirty estimate of your RMR, go to www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calrmr.htm.

For more information on the BodyGem, check out www.healthetech.com.

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