Want to boost your metabolism even while you’re sleeping? Here are four simple way to do it and two major no-no’s to help you stay on a fat burning course that continues to work even when you’re hard at office work or fast asleep. Now who can beat that - burning fat, not muscle, without going to the gym or sweating a drop?

Think of your body and your metabolism as a fire in a furnace. If that fire goes without fuel for very long it will start to dwindle, become less effective and eventually stop altogether. If you’ve ever been camping or at a beach bonfire you know what this looks like. A roaring fire eats up anything that goes into it. A glowing ember may catch some things on fire after they lain there for awhile, but if you put enough of anything on top of it, it will not have any effect and the substance will just lie there. Same with your body. If you’re eating small, healthy meals 4-6 times a day or snacking healthily between 3 meals a day, your body will be like the roaring fire that devours fats as well as nutrients and puts them to good work. However, (and this is no-no #1) if you’re starving yourself or crash dieting, your body is like the ember that can’t do much and let’s food turn to fat that just lies there. So do what you must to plan your meals and eat them in small healthy portions several times a day.

When you do snack and build your meals, opt for proteins like eggs, lean meats and cottage cheese. One study found that college women who ate protein packed lunches had metabolisms that jumped twice as high as those who ate carb-heavy lunches.

Research shows that an average woman can replace two to three pounds of fat with the same amount of muscle when she lifts weights twice a week for just two months. Lean muscle tissue simply has the ability to burn more calories than fat tissue does. Adding a regular routine of strength training to your workout can not only help you burn fat when you’re working out, it can continue your fat burning process while you’re at rest. This makes your body a machine that keeps running even after you’ve called it quits for the day.

Your metabolism doesn’t just get a boost while you’re working out; the effects last after you’ve stopped. Adding cardio to your workout can really rev up your metabolism during activity and make it last longer after you’ve stopped. To get the most of your cardio, alternate two to three minutes of fast-as-you-can activity with medium and slow intervals. This keeps your body guessing and still able to maintain through an entire workout.

No-no #2 is a duh! Sleep! When you skimp on your sleep, even for a night or two, it disrupts the hormones that control your metabolism. This may be the reason why sleep, or lack of it, is linked to weight gain.

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