If you read the previous article in this series, you would be well aware how important metabolism is. The most common mistake that most weight watchers make is to go on a crash diet. While this may help you lose some flab initially, it does more harm than good in the long run. Going on a crash diet ultimately puts your body in a fat-storage mode. Contrary to what you think, your body is an intelligent organism. When not fed properly, it assumes a ‘famine-condition’ behavior. This means that your body starts hoarding whatever energy it gets. And that obviously makes you end up flabbier than before. Back to square one!

So the real way to lose weight is not cutting down on your diet. The real way is to burn off what you eat in a more effective way. And that is what metabolism is all about. Here are a few tips that will help you raise your metabolism, and thus lose weight:

• Breakfast Like A Queen: It’s not for nothing that they call breakfast the most important meal of a day. The worst thing you could do to your metabolism is skip breakfast. So get rid of your hang ups about eating a healthy breakfast. Eat breakfast to lose weight!

• Avoid Refined Foods & Starch: This can best be achieved by experimenting more and more with your menus. Try new foodstuffs and vgetables that you have never had. Just cut back on starchy foods like potatoes, corn, yams, chick peas etc. And completely avoid refined foods. This means no white flour, no white sugar and no snacks made of these. Refined foods have no nutritional value. All they carry is calorific baggage.

• Go Aerobic: Your body was not designed to sit around all day. It was made for real-physical-hard-work. So get off that fat ass and get moving. If you really want to lose weight, you need to consistently put in an aerobic activity of 30-60 minutes everyday. There are no two ways about it, gal!

• Get Some Muscles: Do you want your body to burn a lot of calories even when you are resting? That’s possible, only you gotta work for it. All you need to do is invest some effort and time in resistance training. Muscle tissue burns off a considerably higher number of calories than the fat tissue, even when not exercising. So grab some dumbbells and convert that flab into muscle NOW!

• Spice Up your Food: It has been reported in dietary research that hot and spicy food can boost metabolism. This means that if you eat hot spicy food that makes you sweat, you could be doing yourself a favor. So go for those spicy treats, gal!

• Drink Like A Fish: For your metabolism to work properly, water is an essential requirement. So do not omit from your day, those very important 8 glasses of water.

• Eat More In The first Half Of The Day: Most of your calories should be consumed in the first half of the day. This gives your body time to burn off what you consume. For the latter part of the day, stick with light food stuffs like fruit, salads, soups or a glass of milk.

• Eat Small & Frequent Meals: To keep your body energized through the day, eat at regular intervals. Keep your meals light so that the body can easily burn them off. But do get at least 1000 calories in your daily diet. Going below the 1000 mark will put your body in the ‘starvation mode’.

• Be Active: This means that you use the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Similarly prefer to walk if you are just going down a few blocks. Not only will you burn off some calories, you will also save fuel.