Never miss a meal if you want to lose weight.

  If you want to weigh less, you’ve got to eat less, right? Well, yes, but if you take in too few calories, it can cause your body to lose muscle mass, which will decrease the rate of your metabolism. Plus, when you skimp on calories, your body slows the rate at which is burns calories to conserve the fuel it's got.

“Under-fueling is just as risky as over-fueling,” explains Carolyn Brown, MS RD at Foodtrainers in Manhattan. Lisa Moskovitz, RD, CDN agrees: “In an attempt for quick, noticeable weight loss, many people wrongfully believe that eating as few calories as possible is the best solution. Not only can this lead to numerous nutritional deficiencies as the body is getting less food overall, it can actually have the opposite effect on weight loss.”

The Fix: Instead of cutting calories like crazy, use our simple diet and exercise hacks that can help you slim down quickly and safely without screwing up your metabolism.

Eat small, frequent meals throughout the day. Extending the time between meals makes your body go into "starvation mode," which decreases your metabolism as a means to conserve energy and prevent starvation. While some people are able to lose weight through intermittent fasting, most people generally eat less overall when they eat small, frequent meals. In addition to having four to six small meals per day, eating healthy snacks will also increase metabolism.

Choose lean proteins. Eating a diet rich in lean proteins will increase your metabolism because it takes more energy for your body to digest the protein. Choose lean proteins like turkey, fish, eggs, beans, cottage cheese is a good source of casein protein. Eating cottage cheese, particularly before bed, is a good idea because it releases slowly into the body, and as a result, your metabolism will work all night.

Add spice to your favorite foods. Adding spicy peppers, crushed red pepper flakes, or cayenne pepper to your recipes can help increase your metabolism. The effects of eating spicy foods are only temporary, but you can add a little spice to one or more of your meals every day to keep getting the metabolism boosting benefits.
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Hot sauce is another great addition to any meal. Not only does it help to increase your metabolism, but it doesn't have many calories, if any (depending on brand)...

Keep in mind that although spicy foods do increase metabolism, they only increase metabolism by about 8%, so it is still important to watch your calories if you are trying to lose weight.

Get at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise every day. Aerobic exercise burns calories while you are doing it and keeps your metabolism elevated even after you finish. If you have a hard time fitting in 30 minutes at once, do your aerobic exercise in smaller intervals, like 5, 10, or 15 minute sessions.

Add strength training to your exercise regimen. Building muscle helps raise your resting metabolism. A pound of muscle burns six calories per day while a pound of fat burns only two calories per day. This may not seem like much, but the amount of calories that your body burns while resting will add up over time Muscle burns more calories than fat does (73 more calories per kilogram per day, to be exact) so the more muscle you build, the higher your resting metabolic rate (RMR) will be. Every muscle cell that you gain is like a little factory that constantly burns calories for you, even while you sleep, and revs up when you exercise.

This is the only way to increase RMR, which accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the calories you burn daily.

Look for little ways to get extra exercise. The more you move, the higher your metabolism will be, so look for small opportunities to move more as you go through your day. For example, you could take the stairs instead of the elevator, park further away from the entrance at the grocery store, or ride your bike to work instead of driving.

Drink plenty of water. Studies have shown that by increasing the amount of water that you drink, you can also increase your metabolic rate by as much as 40%. This increase may be a result of your body’s attempt to heat the water that you are ingesting, but the reason for the increase is unclear. Our bodies also often confuse thirst and hunger, so it is important to stay hydrated for that reason as well.

Drink coffee. Coffee has been shown to increase metabolism because of the caffeine content. One study showed that drinking coffee significantly increased the metabolic rate of both normal weight and obese subjects. Keep in mind that the metabolic effects of caffeine are small compared to other measures like exercise.Excess consumption of caffeine can also cause nervousness, insomnia, and other negative side effects.

Drink green tea. Combining green tea (even decaf green tea) with diet and exercise can improve your metabolic rate. One study showed that combining decaffeinated green tea extract with exercise created more dramatic results than exercise alone.^[14]Consider adding decaffeinated green tea extract or drinking a cup or two of green tea as a complement to your diet and exercise regimen.

Follow a healthy diet, not a crash diet. Crash diets dramatically restrict your caloric intake, which can have a negative effect on your metabolism. Even though you may experience some initial weight loss from a crash diet, crash diets ultimately slow down your metabolism and often lead to gaining more weight after the fact. Crash diets can also cause you to become deficient in some important nutrients due to the limitations that they place on the variety of your food intake.

Determine what is influencing your metabolism. Your metabolism is affected by a variety of factors. There are several factors that you can control and change, and some factors that you can't.

• Age - Metabolic rate decreases 5% each decade, after the age of 40, partly because of decreased muscle mass.
• Gender - Men generally burn calories more quickly than women because they have more muscle tissue.
• Heredity - You can inherit your metabolic rate from previous generations.
• Thyroid disorder - Hypothyroidism (under active thyroid gland) and hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid gland) can slow down or speed up metabolism. Talk to your doctor if you think you might have a thyroid disorder. This is especially important for women. Hormones and other factors can greatly increase the effort it takes to lose even a small amount of weight, and often conditions like PCOS go undiagnosed.
• Weight - Different tissues of your body contribute different amounts to resting metabolism. Muscle contributes more than fat per unit mass and, because it is denser than fat, muscle contributes much more per unit volume.
• Body size - Metabolic rate increases as weight, height, and surface area increase.
• Body composition - Fat tissue has lower metabolic activity than muscle tissue. As lean muscle mass increases, metabolic rate increases.
• Climate and body temperature - The base metabolic rate of people in tropical climates is generally 5 to 20 percent higher than their counterparts living in more temperate areas because it takes energy to keep the body cool. Exercise performed in hot weather also imposes an additional metabolic load. Body fat content and effectiveness of clothing determine the magnitude of increase in energy metabolism in cold environments; it takes energy to keep the body warm if you work or exercise in very cold weather.