The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that a healthy individual participate in 30-45 minutes of cardio most days of the week.

Up to 75% of the calories you burn in a day come from your resting metabolic rate (which is the number of calories your body burns at rest); therefore, you can see why boosting that rate will fire up your weight loss!

Aerobic activity is great and definitely important for cardiovascular health, but strength training will have the greatest effect on your metabolism because most of your resting metabolic rate comes from muscle and lean tissue.

Do you skip meals to cut calories? If so, stop! If the body is not fed regularly, it will "hoard" calories and store them as fat to ward off what it fears will be starvation. Simply skipping breakfast on a regular basis may lead to a gain of 6 to 10 pounds in one year!