Yeah, we all know that guy. That guy that sits around half the day playing video games and eating whatever he wants and stays ripped.

Seriously? Personally if I lived this way, they would need a crane to get me out of my place.

Getting your metabolism working for you instead of against you should be #1 on your diet to-do list. I’m going to tell you how to use some very simple habits to make a huge difference right now, no waiting weeks for results.

If you are anything like me, you may have picked up a few habits that are actually working against you. Nobody’s diet is perfect. I know I did in a big way and was surprised that some habits I thought were healthy, were reducing the efficiency of my body’s metabolism. Mostly, it was just not eating most of the day, or eating the wrong things at the wrong time.

I was busy, I mean B U S Y... And you’d figure that alone would keep things burning. WRONG! A busy schedule can very easily mess up your eating schedule and leave you grabbing take out instead of cooking healthy foods at home. I was doing a crappy job and I started looking crappy and feeling crappy. In the end, I found out I was doing some things that were just plain stupid because I was counteracting my own goals.

It turned out all I needed to know about how to speed up my metabolism were a few things I could adjust right away. No crazy diet plan, no 80-minute work-out. Just some solid daily habits that turned the whole thing around for me.

Good Habit #1 Start the day off right -Hydrate

First things first. The best thing you can do in the morning to speed up metabolism is to drink a big glass of ice cold water as soon as you get up. Don’t shove anything else in your mouth before you do that. In fact, give it about half an hour before you have anything else. Don’t grab the Gatorade to quick and ask yourself this question is Gatorade good for you?

This might be the single most important step in learning how to speed up your metabolism successfully. This research project in Germany found out that water can kick start it up close to 25% and keep it going for an hour and a half. If you can’t get anything else down right now, start with this step. You can handle it.

Keep it going throughout the day too. Hydration, specifically with cold water, is going to keep boosting the fat burner and kicking the toxins out of your body. Water is best at speeding up metabolism when it is chilled. Not super cold, not warm.

Good Habit #2 Don’t Starve

It makes sense, if you want to lose some fat, you stop stuffing your face, right? Wrong. Well, mostly anyway. Stop stuffing your face with too much of the wrong stuff. The problem is, if you stop eating enough calories your body will go into survival mode. It will save up most of what you eat and store it as fat because it thinks the sudden lack of calories is proof that there is a food shortage. Your body goes in survival mode and it’s going to hang on to every scrap it can because it doesn’t know when it’s getting fed next.

What to do:

• Get your calories from natural foods

Processed food falls apart in your system and start bouncing around your bloodstream screwing stuff up. Food and Nutrition Research published a report where Professors in the Department of Biology at Pomona College fed people a meal of junk and a meal of healthy food seeking to understand how to speed up metabolism better. The healthy food rocked it out with 50% more butt kicking energy. (No surprises there). Also if your looking to put on mass you can check out the top 10 muscle building foods.

• Get your fats from healthy sources so you don’t feel deprived

It’s not fat that makes you fat, it’s sugar and starches that make you fat. Don’t cut down by cutting out foods that have high calories because of natural fats like avocados, nuts and seeds. Your brain and muscles need that stuff to fire up your work-out.

• Eat Omega3’s

Fish actually might be the #1 food that can change your metabolism the most. Omega3’s send signals to the liver and thyroid. These are directly responsible for directing both your metabolism and your immune system.

• Pack in the protein

Protein is essential for those muscles to use too. But because it is the hardest thing for your body to digest, it has to work really hard to break it down. Score! That’s how to speed up metabolism without lifting a finger. Your body’s doing all the work. That will keep your metabolism from slowing down.

• Drink Green Tea

Have you noticed all of those diet tea commercials? They usually claim drinking their tea can make you skinny. There is some actual science to that claim, but you don’t need to shell out 20 bucks for a box of tea. Really, it’s mostly that the compounds in green tea rev up your metabolism. Other teas like black, anise, oolong and red teas are good, but nothing kicks out the numbers like green tea.

• Spice it up

Spices like chilies and red peppers can give your metabolism a lift. They also make you feel more satisfied. This is a plus if you have issues with feeling food deprived during the day. These spices might also make you want to gulp down some water, which is never a bad thing.

• Season with herbs

Some specific examples are turmeric and ginger. These will give your metabolism a kick and will help it burn better by maximizing the cleansing of toxins from your bloodstream.

• Calcium

Calcium works alongside your metabolism to change how fat is stored in the body. It’s another one of those survival mechanisms. When times are lean and there is no calcium available, the body gets triggered to hold onto fat. So, make sure to eat a few calcium-rich foods everyday.

• Eat your A,B C’s (and D’s)

These vitamins are found in most healthy food sources and make a huge difference in how you feel. That’s because they are absolutely necessary to build great muscle. Making sure to pack them in is only going to make you stronger and leaner.

Good Habit #3 Eat ALL Day

No, really. Snacking throughout the day is shown to be better than sitting down for fewer larger meal. As long as you don’t consider a triple decker cheeseburger a snack that is. You don’t want to go all crazy with it. What I mean is grab a handful of this and that at least every couple of hours. Building strong muscle means getting the right stuff to them. It works like throwing a log on a fire to keep it going.

In fact, people say stuff like burning and furnace when they are talking about speeding up metabolism because it really does work like a fireplace. If you can wrap your head around that and keep it in your mind all day, you are going to own this.

So think of it like this: in the morning, it died down to coals, you need to build the fire back up.

• So drink the water to build it.

Once it gets going, you need to throw a log on it, eat some protein and healthy fat.

• Eggs are amazing. Vegan? Nuts.

All day long, keep it going, graze all day on good stuff, drink to keep hydrated, and get moving around.

Then bank the fire at night

• Eat that bedtime snack for an overnight burn. Nuts are also good at this time as they digest slowly. Sleeping is the longest period your body will go without food or water so get some nutrition in before you hibernate.

Sweet, you’ve got some good habits to work with. But you are at risk of undoing all of that in the long run if you don’t ditch a few bad habits. Remember how I said you could do this without much effort. Well, you can to begin. But if you really want to see some serious changes, you are going to have to step it up and ditch some bad habits.

Bad Habit #1 The Party Scene

Stay away from the party scene. I know, I’m cramping your style now. When I first started looking into how to speed up my metabolism I might have thrown in the towel if somebody told me, no more parties. It’s not really that drastic, though. Sure, go to the club, have some seltzer, act like a maniac. Do your thing. But remember, when your body is busy purging all of those toxins the next day it slows down. Way down. For up to three days. You just can’t be tearing up your body like that and expect it to feel amazing. Add in the effect this has on muscle recovery after training and you’re really working against yourself.

That’s the same reason why you should consider jumping on the natural and organic train. It’s not because you need to be a green freak and save our planet. If you want to, right on, if not, do it for yourself. The deal with eating organic is not just about pesticides causing cancers. When you eat food that has been in contact with any kind of toxin, your body has to divert energy to getting it out of your system. The chemicals sprayed on food to keep bugs from damaging profits must be filtered out by your kidney, liver and thyroid. Stress those out and they get too busy to speed up metabolism.

Bad Habit #2 Chill Out, Man

Stress kills. Don’t let things get to you. If you are the serious kind, relax. While sometimes unavoidable, Stress is bad news and contributes to up to 90% of human illness. Your body starts cranking out all of these chemicals that are great if you need to run from a man-eating bear, but when you don’t burn that stuff out fighting for your life, it acts like poison to your brain. This will kick out so many toxins, your body won’t know what to do with them.

Take time out to do something that helps you clear your head. Yoga is absolutely effective for this. Letting too much stuff pile up in your head is counter productive. Not only are you going to feel like crap, giving stress headspace is going to mess with the way your body processes chemicals. Stress literally releases chemicals and toxins that straight up destroy muscles. True fact.

What to do:

Relax

Reduce your stress level by identifying the things that are messing with you and set some goals to change what you can. Figure out what makes you feel calm and peaceful and make it a priority to do it a few times a week. This can be the single most destructive habit you have so take it seriously.

Make sure to take relaxing at night seriously too. Get some sleep. People who sleep right burn more fat, build more muscle and feel happier. It’s because your body is busy rebuilding itself. It’s like anything else, you are the most productive when you can focus on one thing. When you are awake, your body is busy running all of your systems and keeping you moving. When you sleep your body gets to focus on just two things: keeping you alive and repairing itself to be bigger faster and stronger.

Bad Habit #3 Get Off Your Butt

Yep, you knew that was coming didn’t you? Just because the rest of those things are easy fixes doesn’t mean it’s all going to be easy. You probably knew there was going to be a little work required at some point. The fact is that heart pounding, adrenaline rushing feeling you get when you work so hard you can hardly breathe is exactly how to speed up your metabolism for hours of burning. You can’t build a little muscle without breaking a little sweat.

What to do:

Get your heart racing at least three times a week. And I mean get that thing pumping. You might have your favorite gym routine or fitness machine. It really doesn’t matter how you do it. The afterburn is what you are going for here. Working hard and getting your heart pumping and your muscles burning will keep your body burning calories for up to 12 hours after you train.

Strength training is the single most productive exercise to get your metabolism sped up. First it gets your muscles hot which is your ultimate goal in the first place. Second, just like it burns energy to digest protein, it also takes energy to rebuild muscle.

how to speed up my metabolism

How to Speed Up My Metabolism…Got it?

Back when I was a teenager, I didn’t worry about processed foods and empty calories as much. I didn’t sit around thinking about how to speed up my metabolism. But with my goal being looking and feeling awesome, I have to pay more attention to what I’m doing. If you want to look great and feel awesome everyday, you really just have to pay attention to the little things that will really pay off with big results.

Conclusion

Feeling great and getting your metabolic furnace burning requires no mysterious secret. You just have to be doing the right stuff everyday. There are some things you do for just a little while and reap some specific benefit. There are other things that are more like lifestyle changes. If you change these small habits, it will change your life and your body forever. Lastly, always remember that the best way to get rid of bad habits is the addition of positive ones.

-Terry Asher