Exercise alone is unlikely to lead to significant weight loss unless you are also eating the right foods for your body. Exercise has lots of other health benefits, however, and the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend that we all aim for minutes of exercise a week.

Unpublished research by ZOE scientists also found that exercise helps control blood sugar spikes after meals. Beyond exercise like running or gym classes, there is another way to burn more energy by moving your body. This is called non-exercise activity thermogenesis NEAT and encompasses all of the movements that your body makes outside of eating and sleeping.

This includes fidgeting, standing, and moving around. Some scientists believe that by increasing NEAT, you can increase the amount of energy that you burn.

But more research is needed to study this in detail. Dropping weight too fast or crash dieting is something you should avoid in order to stop your metabolic rate from dropping significantly. This makes it harder to maintain your weight, let alone lose weight.

Researchers have shown that losing weight fast leads to a greater reduction in metabolic rate than more gradual weight loss.

Furthermore, your metabolic rate can stay lower for years, meaning that even if you do lose weight, you would have to eat significantly less in the long-term to maintain that new weight. Instead, we know that the way your body responds to food is unique.

If you eat the right foods for your metabolism, your weight and overall health will benefit. Unpublished research from the ZOE team shows that following our personalized nutrition program led to an average weight loss of 9.

Burning energy, particularly if you are looking for ways to manage your weight, is only one aspect of your metabolism. Food, exercise, and sleep all play a role — not just in your weight, but also in your overall health.

But prioritizing your bedtime ultimately impacts not just how well-rested you feel in the morning, but also how your body digests food the next day and how hungry you feel.

Exercising is not just good for weight management, but also for your heart, your sleep, and your mental health. There is no easy answer to increasing your metabolism or burning more calories. But if you try our seven tips, you can find what works best for you. If you want to understand more about your personal metabolic control, ZOE can help.

Our at-home testing kit analyzes your blood sugar and blood fat responses, as well as your gut microbiome. Using the latest science, your personalized ZOE program helps you identify the best foods for your body.

Take our free quiz to find out what this can mean for you. A high-protein total diet replacement increases energy expenditure and leads to negative fat balance in healthy, normal-weight adults. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. A minireview of effects of green tea on energy expenditure.

Critical reviews in food science and nutrition. Consumption of ultra-processed foods associated with weight gain and obesity in adults: A multi-national cohort study. Clinical Nutrition. Effects of caffeine on brown adipose tissue thermogenesis and metabolic homeostasis: A review.

Frontiers in Neuroscience. Effect of protein overfeeding on energy expenditure measured in a metabolic chamber. Effect of resistance training on resting metabolic rate and its estimation by a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry metabolic map. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis NEAT : a component of total daily energy expenditure.

Journal of Exercise Nutrition and Biochemistry. Postprandial energy expenditure in whole-food and processed-food meals: implications for daily energy expenditure. Food and Nutrition Research. Food and Drug Administration doesn't ask for proof that dietary supplements are safe or that they work.

Question the claims that are made. Always let your health care providers know about supplements you take. There's no easy way to lose weight.

To take in fewer calories than you burn, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends cutting to calories a day to lose 1 to 1. Add more physical activity to get to your weight-loss goals faster and maintain your weight loss.

A health care provider, such as a doctor or registered dietitian, can help you explore ways to lose weight. There is a problem with information submitted for this request. Sign up for free and stay up to date on research advancements, health tips, current health topics, and expertise on managing health.

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Sections Basics Weight-loss basics Diet plans The Mayo Clinic Diet Diet and exercise Diet pills, supplements and surgery In-Depth Expert Answers Multimedia Resources News From Mayo Clinic What's New. Products and services. Metabolism and weight loss: How you burn calories Find out how metabolism affects weight, the truth behind slow metabolism and how to burn more calories.

By Mayo Clinic Staff. Thank you for subscribing! Sorry something went wrong with your subscription Please, try again in a couple of minutes Retry. Show references Goldman L, et al. In: Goldman-Cecil Medicine. Elsevier; Accessed Sept.

Preventing weight gain. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Perreault L, et al. Obesity: Genetic contribution and pathophysiology.

Piaggi P. Metabolic determinants of weight gain in humans. Department of Health and Human Services and U. Department of Agriculture. Whether you refer to it as your BMR or your metabolism, at the end of the day, we all just want to know how to lose any excess weight, right?

Keep scrolling for easy-to-follow tips on how to boost your metabolism. There is some debate around the whole idea of whether eating breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper is really the secret to weight loss.

Instead of worrying too much about size, it's the type of foods you include on your breakfast plate that really has an effect on metabolism. If you want to fire up your system, a study found that you should factor in low-GL so low-sugar and high-protein foods at breakfast.

Think savory, and include some lean protein like chicken yes, for breakfast or eggs. When it comes to basic cardio HIIT not included , you only raise your calorie burn while you're active, but HIIT and strength training will keep your metabolism elevated for hours afterward, increasing fat burn for far longer than just the time you were working.

Your morning brew is very high in antioxidants, but also linked to excess cortisol and adrenal fatigue," says Kelly LeVeque, health coach. Take the beWELL approach: Enjoy a cup of brew in the morning and then stick to green tea throughout the afternoon.

Since high cortisol levels caused by excessive caffeine are more likely to put extra weight around your waist, avoid all sodas and calorie-laden coffee drinks.

Increasing your fiber intake might aid in weight loss. How so? Well, Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD and creator of the F-Factor Diet, claims that eating a diet rich in high-fiber foods boosts metabolism because fiber is indigestible.

There are two types of fiber: soluble, which takes on water as it's digested and helps you feel fuller for longer, while insoluble fiber simply passes through the system, helping us to pass our food. Most fiber has a combination of both insoluble and soluble fibers.

Foods higher in insoluble fiber include wheat bran, beans, cauliflower and apples. While soluble fiber is found in brown rice, oat bran and artichokes, among other foods. A healthy metabolism equals a healthy body, but metabolic syndrome can lead to diabetes and heart disease. Of course, exercise and a healthy diet will go a long way to prevent this, but if you're going through a busy period, and your workouts and healthy meals have taken a back seat, just make sure you're supplementing with the right micronutrients.

Certain vitamins and minerals have been found to support a healthy metabolism. While we can get these from a varied diet, it's worth padding your intake with a supplement sometimes. Research has shown that fat soluble micronutrients, such as Vitamins A and E may be crucial for preventing metabolic syndrome.

Vitamin D may also be key in preventing metabolic syndrome, and since we live in a country where the sun doesn't always shine, it may be worth taking this every day regardless of the merits of your diet.

As we have mentioned before, strength training is the key to burning more fat at rest in other words for raising your BMR. Lean muscle is definitely your ally in raising your BMR.

In fact, an older study found that weight-lifting increased calorie-burn for 38 hours after exercise. As dietitian Su-Nui Escobar notes, "muscle burns more calories than fat at rest.

Muscle loss occurs due to lack of exercise and it also naturally happens as people age. While cardio is integral to maintaining health, muscle is equally important. The key to maintaining muscle mass is to do strength training workouts, from weight lifting to pilates," Escobar says.

As you can see, it is not that lack of sleep reduces the metabolism but it makes it a lot harder to eat in a way that [leads] to a good body weight. Thus, if a person eats a diet with more protein and less fat, this person will use more calories. On the other hand, if the diet is high in fat, it will take fewer calories to digest and absorb the meal.

This is called the thermic effect of food. Studies have found that those who drink more water tend to burn more calories. The U.