No one particular food will boost your metabolism, but how you eat can. The following tips can get your metabolism running faster:

Start your day off with breakfast. Your metabolism slows during the night while you are sleeping and breakfast is your body’s cue to speed it back up. If you skip breakfast, then your metabolism doesn’t know it needs to speed up and will keep running slower until you eat.

Don’t skip meals and eat every 3-4 hours. This will keep your metabolism running high throughout the day.

Make sure you are eating enough. If you get too few calories, your metabolism will slow to conserve the energy it is getting. If you’re not sure how many calories you need, you can always make an appointment with our outpatient dietitian to find out.

Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables have a variety of vitamins and minerals that your body needs to run your metabolism. If you don’t have enough of these vitamins and minerals, your metabolism won’t be able to run properly. Each fruit and vegetable has a different mix of vitamins and minerals, so it is important to try to get a good variety over the course of your week. Think of it as trying to eat the rainbow of colors weekly.

Drink plenty of water. Water is an essential part of metabolism as well. If you’re dehydrated your metabolism will not be able to run properly much like when it is lacking vitamins and minerals.

Exercise daily. The exercise can help increase your metabolism as well. Also research shows that regular exercisers have healthier diets. It is unknown if people who exercise crave healthier foods or if they just tend to lead healthier lifestyles in general. Either way, this could benefit your diet indirectly. If it makes you crave healthier foods, then you’re likely to eat more of them. Or it may inspire you to have a healthier lifestyle overall.