One of the most effective ways for losing fat and getting into good shape is to boost your metabolism. This insures that you will burn calories, especially fat calories, effectively and consistently. Having a raging furnace of a metabolism is the best way to be healthy and in great shape.

Through a combination of exercise and diet, you can have the body of your dreams and look forward to a healthy life. The best part about having a strong metabolism is that it will help keep you fit by itself, allowing you a few more guilty pleasures than any diet ever could!

There are several articles on 3, 5, or 8 ways to boost metabolism, but there doesn't seem to be any more than that, and certainly none that give more than 10 ways. Many of these articles will repeat themselves, so here is an article with 25 ways to help boost your metabolism and/or burn fat!

1) Increase Muscle Mass
This is the most important factor of metabolism. The faster your metabolism, the more calories and fat your body burns. Muscle burns far more calories than fat does. In fact, muscle burns 90% more calories than fat. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn in a day. Adding just a few pounds of muscle can help you burn 100s of calories.

Consistent weight lifting, even at low intensity levels with light barbells, can help up your metabolism 10%. What does that mean? 200 calories a day, or 2 pounds of fat a month-all for doing nothing because your muscles burn the fat.

2) Never Skip Meals
Skipping meals will lower your metabolism, causing your body to lose less calories and fat, and even eat away at your own muscle, making it harder to burn calories when you do eat again. Your body goes into "starvation mode," which hurts your body and your healthy weight loss attempts. For most people 1,200 calories is the cut off point.

3) Regular Activity and/or Exercise
Activity demands calories, so taking part in regular activity or regular exercise will cause your body to constantly demand more and more calories. Exercising consistently will cause your body to not only burn more calories, but to also raise your metabolism, so even at rest your burn more calories. Regular exercise like walking, cycling, aerobics, or hiking (among many others) will help raise your metabolism during the activity and also create an "after burn" effect for hours later.

4) Eat Enough Protein
Protein is extremely important. Not only does your body need a certain amount of protein in order to maintain its current muscle mass, but you have to have protein to repair the damage from exercise. Without extra protein, you can't build new muscles. It's also worth noting that the body spends more calories digesting proteins than anything else, so eating healthy lean proteins also counts as smart dieting on top of metabolic boosting.

5) No All Nighters!
The body preserves as much energy (calories) as possible when put under stress. If you don't get enough sleep to revitalize, then the body cuts back on energy, meaning your body won't burn as many calories. That's not helpful. Getting sleep is critical to boosting the metabolism.

6) Pass on the Wine, Liquor, and Beer
Not only is alcohol empty calories, but some recent studies suggest that your body burns fat more slowly when you have alcohol with a meal, so avoid the alcohol if you can, because "beer belly" is looking increasingly accurate.

7) Green Tea
Green tea is a healthy anti-oxidant that has long been seen as a cleansing alternative medicine and it extremely healthy for the human body. In addition, green tea seemed to cause minor raises in the metabolism of most people while maintaining optimal health. It may not be much, but it's another 6 lbs of fat a year burned off, in addition to all the other amazing healthy benefits.

8) Got Skim Milk?
This one is still controversial, but there is a lot of at least circumstantial evidence suggesting that three to four servings of low fat, or fat free, dairy products a day help adjust your metabolism to burn more fat calories than if you skip the dairy. But skim and fat free is the key.

9) Fluctuate Calories
An exercise schedule that changes up constantly is best to burn calories, just as constantly changing your daily calorie level also is a great idea for keeping your metabolism at its maximum level of efficiency. This can be done by day or week, so you may eat 1,800 calories one day, 2,200 the next, then 1,600 before jumping to 2,000 again. This will keep your body from starvation mode, as well as keep it from leveling out.

10) Eat breakfast!
You never want to skip meals, and breakfast is doubly important. The first meal of the day is what gets the metabolic rate started for the day, since your body is in starvation mode after sleeping, since that usually means you haven't eaten in 10 hours. To get the metabolism going, eat a healthy breakfast with some protein!

11) Cut out the Sugar!
It's not completely out of line to say that white sugar is poison to the body. Sugars are empty calories, bad for your body, teeth, and health, and convert into fat. Just cut as much of it out as possible. Get the sugar your body needs from natural fruits.

12) Cut out the Carbonated Beverages!
The natural culprit here is soda pop, which is terrible and should be avoided at all costs (even diet), but any carbonated beverage tends to keep on water weight, add empty calories, and also keeps vitamins from being effectively absorbed, which slows down your body's calorie burning abilities.

13) Drink Water
This one can not be emphasized enough. Water flushes the system, keeps every organ working at maximum effectiveness, and raises your metabolism. Drink ice water. This alone has helped many people lose several pounds over the course of a year.

14) Determine your daily calorie needs
The starvation level for most people is around 1,200 calories, meaning you never want to fall below that. Figuring out your exact daily needs can help you make a more effective diet and metabolic plan. Your proper caloric level is determined by several different factors that include age, gender, height, weight, muscle vs. fat body mass, and other minor factors, but there is a general estimate shortcut, which is to take your weight in pounds and multiply it by 11.

15) Throw out the three, bring in the six
The body can absorb a small meal's worth of calories in about 3 hours, meaning if you eat a small meal every 3 hours, your body will constantly be burning calories. Eat a 200-400 calorie "mini-meal" every 3-4 hours to keep your body constantly burning calories without packing them away.

16) Just move!
You don't need to run a marathon or bike 20 miles. The most basic of physical activity can make up for up to 1/3 of the calories you burn in a day. Basic housework, taking stairs over an elevator, taking five minute walks, walking down the block instead of driving, all these will help to burn calories and keep your body active. Even a little pacing while you think can make a difference.

17) Read, don't watch TV
This may sound weird, but sitting on the couch watching TV causes your resting metabolism to dip up to 1/3. A person sitting on the couch reading a book doesn't see any such dip. So if you're bored, reading a book or magazine is much better than watching TV or a movie.

18) Eat lean protein and good carbs
There are certain types of foods that your body burns easily, and others that it doesn't. There are foods with a high "thermic effect," which means that your body has to use a large number of calories to burn the food down into energy. Good carbs (complex carbs) and lean proteins (white meats) are the best foods to take advantage of this effect. Make sure your diet is heavy in them, and avoid fatty red meats and simple carbs.

19) Aerobic Exercise
Despite studies claiming that moderate low impact exercises are best for burning fat, NOTHING beats cardio! Doing any kind of aerobic exercise is huge, and doing it in the morning immediately before breakfast is best. Lower level exercise may burn a higher percentage, but if 100 calories are burned at 80% fat rate, that's still not nearly as good as 250 calories burned at a 65% fat rate. Get out and burn that fat!

20) Never Fall Below the Minimum Calorie Line!
Never eat less than 1,200 calories per day! Less than this puts your body into starvation mode, which kills the metabolism and causes your body to cannibalize off its own muscles. Very small people may have a slightly lower minimum calorie base, but most people should use 1,200 as their baseline.

21) Spread out exercise during the day to increase metabolism and after burn
Take several walks during different parts of the day in addition to your morning cardio. All exercise has short term and long term after burn effects, so adding even 2-3 15 minute walks throughout the day is a great way to boost your metabolism, as well as burn some extra calories.

22) Look for common situations to be active
Look for the common, every day situations to be active. There are always opportunities to fit in a little bit of exercise. Park as far from the store as you can instead of spending 20 minutes looking for a spot by the door. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk around the block, sweep the porch/deck, do minor house work, etc. There are always many opportunities during the day to be active, and try to fit in as many as possible.

23) Use the theory of "intervals" during exercise
The theory here is that keeping your body off guard will keep your metabolism at its maximum capacity. If you're taking a twenty minute walk, every five minutes take a thirty second sprint. Then walk again. This will cause your body to constantly burn more calories, since it is always expecting another surge in activity.

24) Spices, spices, spices
Spicy foods like hot peppers and hot mustard can help temporarily boost your metabolism. If you like spicy foods, that's great! A little spice can help you burn more of your meal naturally.

25) Don't let the stress get to you!
Stress can spark your appetite, causing you to overeat. Stress also causes your body to store more and more fat in anticipation of a famine. In this case, evolution works against you. Learning to cope with stress will make you healthier while also allowing your metabolism to continue to burn.

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Originally published by me at Associated Content