To drop a few pounds, cut back on the calories and step up the exercise. Today, supplements, reducing products and fad diets abound, all with claims that you need them to help you maintain or lose weight. It's all become more complicated. To a degree, your ability to maintain, increase or decrease your weight is something that is handed down to you by your parents. The best way to increase your metabolism and burn more calories is to decrease the amount of fat you're carrying and replace it with muscle.
Muscle tissue has high-energy requirements.
According to the American Council on Exercise, every pound of muscle burns about 50 calories a day. Weight training helps you build muscle, and aerobic exercise will help you burn fat. According to Ulbricht, fad diets and low-calorie intake without exercise might help you lose weight initially, but you'll lose muscle as well, which slows down your metabolism, making it increasingly difficult to maintain a healthy weight. Regular exercise is the surest way to crank up a sluggish metabolism but your daily diet deserves some credit too. Research shows that eating in the morning can speed your resting metabolic rate by 10 to 25 percent after your meal, which means you start burning calories at a faster rate than if you wait until noontime to eat.