Increasing your metabolism is one thing that you can do to help you lose weight without having to cut as many calories. Your metabolism determines how quickly your body burns calories and is influenced by your height, weight, age, body type, activity level and genetics. Though you can't change your genetic makeup to burn calories faster, you can tweak your lifestyle to boost your metabolism. Along with cutting calories, increasing your metabolism can allow you to develop and maintain a healthy weight.
Step 1
Replace two to three large meals per day with several small ones. When you graze on smaller meals throughout the day, your digestive tract has to keep working to digest the food, which keeps your metabolism high, The Diet Channel reports. Eating more frequent small meals can also keep your body from going into a "fasting" state, -- a natural slowing of your metabolism that occurs when you haven't eaten in several hours.
Step 2
Increase your muscle mass. As you get older, your body tends to lose some muscle, which can lead to a higher percentage of body fat, Mayo Clinic.com explains. Fat tissue burns fewer calories than muscle, so do strength training exercises, such as lifting weights, to help prevent muscle loss and to keep your metabolism high.
Step 3
Get more aerobic exercise. Getting your heart pumping, whether its by playing sports, walking briskly, jogging or simply doing physically demanding housework increases your metabolism as your cardiovascular system is stimulated. This increase in metabolism continues even after you finished with your workout.
Step 4
Consume green tea or compounds derived from green tea. Green tea contains a number of compounds known as catechins that can boost your metabolism, including epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG. EGCG can increase your body's thermogenesis -- your body's natural production of heat, leading to your body naturally burning more calories.
Step 5
Drink ice-cold water and other cold drinks. When you consume cold beverages, your body has to heat them up to your internal body temperature. Although the additional heat expenditure does not result in a drastic increase in calories burned, this is a way to burn a few extra calories with minimal effort.
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