Category: Metabolism

If trying to clean up your diet just leaves you more ravenous and frustrated, you’re not alone. Time to learn how your eating decisions affect your appetite a.m. to p.m.

Your metabolism is partly ruled by genetics, but you can rev it up naturally by eating right. Fill up on the following nine foods to increase your body's fat-burning power.

Yet another reason not to let your weight seesaw: You'll hamstring your metabolism. "My patients with the lowest metabolisms are the weight cyclers," says Scott Isaacs, MD, clinical instructor of medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine. "When you lose weight, you lose muscle and fat, but when you gain it back, it's mostly fat, which burns fewer calories."

Even if it's been a laze-around-in-your-yoga-pants day, you can still burn more fat for basically no effort by adjusting your thermostat. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation found that when people were exposed to cold temps for three hours, they burned an additional 250 calories. Your body has to go into overdrive to heat itself up to a cozy 98 degrees, and extra calories are zapped in the process, explains Scott Isaacs, MD, an endocrinologist and the author of Beat Overeating Now! You don't have to walk around shivering to get the benefits, he says; just lower your thermostat by two to three degrees.

"Any time you lose weight, you see improvements in glucose metabolism," says Scott Isaacs, M.D., author of "Hormonal Balance" and a clinical instructor of medicine at Emory School of Medicine. "And anytime you restrict calories, you get weight loss. But if you do something unsustaniable you get fatigue after a while and ultimately gain the weight back." "During a fast, a person can go into starvation ketosis, which reduces appetite. They won't be hungry because of the ketones -- a byproduct of fat -- that masks hunger. But as soon as they do something where they are no longer ketotic, there's a rebound appetite, which can be hard to control," Isaacs says.