speeding up metabolism...how?
 

as the subject reads:

how do i speed up my metabolism?

are there certain foods/meals/frequency of meals that i should eat? or avoid eating?

and it seems like im always hungry...couple hours after each meal i get hungry again.

If this really bothers you go see your doctor or a qualified nutritionist. Most metabolism is governed by the thyroid gland. Levels of it's hormone in the blood stream are a good measure of it's health and activity.

The only way I know of to speed up your metabolism is through exercise.

exercise increases metabolism

i know a lot of people that swear by the "grazing" method.

basically eating small meals every couple hours.
it also depends on the types of foods you eat. carbs are digested rather quickly, protein sticks around a bit longer.

How often are you eating meals, and how many meals a day?

Excercise and eat 6 small meals a day.

not just exercise i'd suspect, but building useful body mass, i.e. muscle?

little and often eating will keep your guts working constantly, with will up your energy burning, but not your underlying metabolic rate. That's just a habit that happens to burn more calories, right? I mean, if you develop a knee jerking habit, that'll burn more calories, but won't increase your metabolic rate....

Exercise your brain more.

Just stay active. You'll get hungry sooner if you just sit there than if you walk around, bicycle, garden, or do some other low- to medium-intensity exercise over a period of time. That's the kind of exercise that your body burns fat for; it saves your stored carbos for intensive exercise.

I have eaten breakfast and gone out gardening for say, six hours, and not gotten hungry. Won't eat lunch until four in the afternoon. Because the exercise is low-intensity and constant, my body fuels it by burning fat, not carbos. So my blood sugar stays high, and I don't get hungry.

Not that I do all that much of that, or I'd be down three or four belt notches. But it does work that way.

I read that doing 10 push-ups or enough to get your heart rate up a few minutes after u wakeup will speed up your metabolism. Not sure if its true. I read it at www.howthingswork.com
Do a search on metabolism

Yep, ive heard that 'grazing' speeds up the metabolic rate too. Henry Rollins swears by it anyway.

Exercising early in the day (like right after you get up) will help. Building muscle helps, as muscles consume more calories than fat even when you're inactive.

Exercise and eating small meals through out the day.

Increase muscle mass, increase aerobic activities and eat smaller meals more frequently

I heard that eating spicy foods also have a small impact on your metabolism.

eating frequently every 2 hours small meals works for me

It's really a combination of everything in your lifestyle. It's not any ONE thing.

Exercise is probably the most important of all.

Secondly, "grazing" really does work.
Think of it this way: If your meals are a long time apart you're sending your body a message that it needs to store more fat because it doesn't know when that next meal will be. Its an evolutionary mechanism for people who live(d) in areas where food was scarce.
On the other hand, if you eat alot of small meals a day you're telling your body that food is plentiful so it doesn't need to store as much fat.

Combine excerise with eating properly: never skip a meal and instead of gorging yourself at a main meal, eat less and have a couple snacks in the daytime instead.

That should do the trick.

Exercising right after you get up. Very dangerous. There are reports of heart attacks due to this because you are comming from a sleep state (comma) and then jump starting your heart rate way up. Careful! Start by drinking a full glass of water right after you wake up, it will hydrate you and will give you some time to wake to normal heart rate. Again drink to chuck a glass of water. Should take you about 10 minutes to finish the glass.

Also, the biggest problems for people in not being able to lose weight is they eat tons of bread, sugar, pasta. These things make you fat. If you ate most of you meals and snacks like you were a rabbit you would find your motabolism will improve. Drop the crap foods to once a week for a treat and don't be afraid of the chicken, steaks, beef, just no bread and such!

Sorry in my last miss typed. drink a glass of water do not chug a glass of water is what I was trying to say.

the problem with exercising right after waking up actually has to do with tissue temperature. you're body temp. drops by a few degrees as you sleep, so if you exercise right when you wake up your exercising cold. it's not really unhealthy/unsafe if you take a slower longer warm-up period, and don't work at as high of an intensity as you might after you've been up a long time.

This is kind of simplistic advise compared to what everyone else here has said, but it's also important to eat breakfast. I know it can be overlooked for some reason or another by different people, but it's important for getting your metabolism up for the rest of the day. I believe sumo wrestlers would skip breakfast when trying to gain extra weight for training.