5 Tiny Ways to Boost Your Metabolism

Eating more protein could bump up your post-meal calorie burn, suggests research in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. In a small study, researchers had 10 healthy, normal-weight women between 19 and 22 years old eat a high-protein diet one day and a high-complex-carb diet another, to compare how each diet affected their metabolism. (The first diet contained 30 percent protein and 30 percent complex carbs. The second had 50 percent complex carbs and 15 percent protein. Roughly equal amounts of sugar and fat made up the rest.) They found that after meals on the high-protein day, the women's bodies were producing about twice as much heat, an indication that they were also burning more calories.