Pump it up
Unlike fat, muscles burn kilojoules even when you’re not using them. Ask a trainer to help you create a routine that delivers a full-body muscle tune-up. Start with the highest weight you can manage at each machine (or for each exercise if you prefer free weights). Up it when you can complete 15 reps.

Pound the pavement
Studies show that regular heart rate-raising exercise, such as a high-paced half-hour run several times a week, will increase your body’s daily burn rate by as much as 420kJ.

Eat
Starvation diets are the worst thing you can do to your metabolism. When your body thinks it’s in a food-scarcity crisis, it conserves energy. You burn kilojoules more slowly to compensate for eating less. The net effect: you suffer for nothing. Hate that.

Add hot chilli peppers. Ice your water. Chew celery or lettuce
Studies suggest that these habits make your body burn extra kilojoules. The chilli peppers briefly spike temperature and raise heart rate, both of which require energy. The cold water makes your digestive system work harder to bring the liquid to body temperature. The celery and lettuce may cost more kilojoules in chewing and digestion than they provide. None of these effects will buy you more than an extra 40kJ or so a day. Still, those are 40kJ that your thighs will never see.

Drink up
Many experts believe that caffeine is a metabolic stimulant. So have that latte. Or brew some green tea. In a recent Swiss study, a green tea extract raised metabolism by the equivalent of 326kJ a day, though the researchers weren’t sure why. The extract is called epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG.