DaytonDailyNews.com

Last week you learned about easy ways to boost your metabolism and increase the number of calories you burn each day. Here are some others:

Eat breakfast. Starting your day with a healthy meal kick-starts your metabolism. Study after study confirms that people who eat breakfast are more likely to manage hunger and food intake, making weight control that much easier. Data from nearly 3,000 people who lost an average of 70 pounds and kept it off a year or longer showed that only 4 percent did not eat breakfast every day.

Consume small, frequent meals. Your body must burn calories in order to digest the food you have eaten, up to 10 percent of your meal, depending on type of food you choose. The harder your body has to work to break down your meal, the more energy must be used. When meals are skipped, your metabolism slows down, causing your body to conserve calories in an effort to protect itself from what it perceives as starvation. Consuming many small, healthy meals throughout the day provides you with a continual supply of energy and helps you to avoid blood sugar highs and lows that can lead to cravings and binges.

Get enough rest. Lack of sleep slows the body's metabolic processes, so if you are chronically sleep deprived, set an earlier bedtime and/or later wake up time when possible. Going to bed a half hour earlier each night is one of the easiest ways to help ensure you get the required amount.

Engage in resistance training. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, meaning that it requires calories to sustain itself, leaving less to be stored in the fat cells. For this reason, the most effective body fat loss programs always include resistance training.

Aerobic exercise. Aerobic (cardiovascular) activity is great for improving heart health and is a super calorie burner if performed consistently and with proper intensity. Examples of aerobic activity include walking, jogging or any exercise that elevates the heart rate for an extended period of time, usually 20 minutes or longer. To make the most of your cardiovascular sessions, if you are using exercise machines, avoid using poor technique, such as leaning on the handrails when using the treadmill or elliptical trainer. Anything that makes the exercise easier reduces the number of calories you could be burning.

Remember to change your exercise routine from time to time. Once having adapted to a particular exercise routine, your body requires another challenge in order to go to the next level of fitness and calorie burning.

Cross training is one way to challenge yourself. With this method of training, you would engage in a wide variety of different activities rather than just one or two. Cross training can provide a greater calorie payoff than many other ways of exercising because it taxes all of the major muscle groups in different ways.

An example of cross training might be to do a few minutes of brisk walking followed by several minutes of jogging, followed by jumping rope and/or using a rowing machine.

Another way to cross train is to do a different activity on different days. An example would be playing tennis one day, lifting weights the next, yoga the next and biking or swimming on another day.

Interval training is another great way to challenge yourself. This method of training involves alternating between intervals of high intensity and low intensity exercise. An example here would be walking at a warm up pace for 5 minutes, followed by moderate pace for 3 minutes, and finally a very challenging pace for one minute, repeating for the duration of the workout.

Alternating between strength training and aerobic exercise is known as circuit training, another great way to give a boost to your usual routine and increase calorie expenditure. An example of circuit training would be to begin with five minutes of cardiovascular exercise followed by one set each of several different resistance training exercises, followed by another five minutes of cardio, and so on.

Continue alternating cardio and strength exercises for the length of the session, finishing with a cool down of five minutes or so of walking and gentle stretching.

Marjie Gilliam is an International Sports Sciences Association Master certified personal trainer and fitness consultant. She owns Custom Fitness Personal Training Services. Write to her in care of the Dayton Daily News, contact her at (937) 878-9018 or by e-mail at OHTrainer@aol.com. Her web site is at www.ohtrainer.com.