Boosting your metabolism requires faith, self-discipline and a willingness to change. This is because most slow metabolisms are the result of years of bad habits and a reluctance to adopt a healthier life style.

There is no one magic bullet or pill that will automatically boost your metabolism. It takes a slow, steady dedication to following through on each of the following top ten ways to boost your metabolism.

1. Train With Weights - Aerobic exercise is good for you but it is the anaerobic exercise that involves the lifting of weights that is going to transform fatty tissue into fat burning muscle. This is because muscle tissue is metabolically active tissue. This means that it burns calories even while you are at rest. Thus it stands to reason that the more muscle you have the more calories your body is going to burn.

2. Participate in High Intensity Aerobics - Whenever you perform an aerobic activity such as swimming, dancing or cycling and perform it with the intention of raising your heart rate your body experiences an oxygen deficit. This causes your metabolism to go into overdrive and eliminate toxins and wastes quickly from your system.

3. Don't Avoid All Fats - Stay away from saturated fats and eat fats that are rich in omega 3 and omega 6 oils. Depriving yourself of all fats will cause your metabolism to slow down as your body begins to believe it is starving and goes into fat conservation mode. This makes it difficult for fat cells to be transferred to the bloodstream where they can be used for fueling the muscles.

4. Eat Several Small Meals a Day - Whenever your body is busy digesting, your metabolic rate is raised. Snacking on healthy foods several times a day keeps your metabolism elevated and working efficiently.

5. Stay Away From Refined Foods - The harder your body has to work to process a food, the more your metabolism in raised. Refined foods are in a sense already partly digested and speed sugars and fats directly into your blood stream. This lowers the metabolism. Whole foods, especially if they are raw, take longer to digest.

6. Eat Low Glycemic Carbohydrates - Low glycemic carbohydrates are ones that take the body longer to metabolize. These include fibrous, slow to digest vegetables such as celery and broccoli and all of the beans in the legume family.

7. Vary Your Overall Calorie Intake - The more you disturb your body's metabolism by refusing to let it settle in an overall routine the more your metabolism will speed up. Don't make it your goal to eat exactly 1200 calories a day. Eat 900 one day and 1600 the next.

8. Eat More Protein - Make at least 30% of your daily diet protein. If you do this then your body will utilize 30% of your total caloric intake for the day just to digest the protein.

9. Drink Ice Cold Water - The colder the water is that you drink, the more your body will have to expend calories to raise it to your body temperature. This helps increase your metabolism.

10. Take the Stairs! - Taking the stairs and not the elevator can help boost your metabolism. The same goes for choosing to bike to work rather than driving and parking far away from the store in the mall parking lot.

Remember that when it comes to boosting your metabolism every little bit of extra energy expenditure counts even though it does not seem like much at the time!