Hot sauce can boost your metabolism. But research suggests that more-palatable, mild peppers may have the same calorie-burning potential.

Pack your salads and stir-fry with sweet peppers-including bell peppers, pimentos, rellenos, and sweet banana peppers. They're just as effective as the hot stuff.

You don't need to eat six meals per day to stroke your metabolic fire. Three squares can also keep you from growing round. Research comparing the two ways of eating found that belly fat, the kind that increases heart-disease risk, only increased in the high-meal frequency group.

Focus on overall calorie control and get plenty of fiber, protein, and micronutrients. What you eat is more important than when.

The sugar in energy drinks revs up your belly fat. Caffeine may provide a bit of a boost to the metabolism, especially when ingested before exercise, but no amount of metabolic boost can burn off the empty calories that energy drinks supply.

If your goal is to burn calories two glasses of water will increase your metabolic rates by 30 percent.

Research found that eating carbs at night increases satiety and the calories burned digesting food on the next day, which may lead to weight loss. Moreover, eating carbs during the day increases blood sugar levels.

Enjoy a pasta dinner-cold. Not only will the carbs set you up for tomorrow's fat burn, but chilling pasta before you eat it changes the nature of the carbs to resistant starch-a type of carbohydrate that's harder to store as fat. 

Skeletal muscle has a very low metabolic rate when at rest, at just 6 calories per pound. That's three times as much as fat, so building muscle definitely helps your daily fat-burn. But you might be better off building your brainpower: a pound of brain actually burns 109 calories a day.

Exercise, and don't sweat the big muscles if you don't want to. Any exercise will do.