You can increase your BMR, but the gains are modest and slow: building muscle adds roughly 6 calories a day per pound of muscle gained. Adding 5 kg (11 lb) of muscle raises your resting burn by about 66 calories a day. Real change means stacking small levers — muscle, protein, movement, sleep — over months.
That is still worth doing. An extra 66 calories a day from muscle, plus 200 or more from moving more, plus the higher calorie cost of digesting protein, adds up to a meaningful difference over a year. This guide gives you seven science-backed ways to raise your BMR, with the actual numbers for each, so you can judge what is worth your effort.
1. Build Muscle with Strength Training
This is the single most effective way to raise your BMR, and it works for one simple reason: muscle tissue is metabolically expensive, even at rest. A pound of muscle burns roughly 6 calories a day at rest, against about 2 calories for a pound of fat. Swap fat for muscle at the same body weight and your resting burn rises.
The numbers keep expectations honest. Adding 5 kg (11 lb) of muscle — a solid year of consistent training for most people — adds about 11 × 6 = 66 calories a day to your BMR. For our example woman (35 years old, 70 kg, 165 cm, BMR 1,395), that would take her to about 1,461. That is not dramatic, but it is permanent: the extra burn continues every day, including rest days, for as long as the muscle stays. Aim for two to four strength sessions a week covering the big movements — squats, hinges, pushes, pulls — and progress the weight gradually. If you want your starting point first, check it with a free bmr calculator, then recheck after a few months of training.
2. Eat Enough Protein
Protein has the highest thermic effect of any nutrient: your body burns 20 to 30 percent of protein’s calories just digesting and processing it, compared with 5 to 10 percent for carbohydrates and 0 to 3 percent for fat. On a 2,000-calorie diet, shifting a meaningful share of calories from fat and carbohydrate to protein can add tens of calories a day to your total burn — and protein is not counted in BMR itself, so this is a bonus on top of your resting rate.
Protein’s bigger job is protecting the muscle you already have. When you eat in a calorie deficit, your body loses a mix of fat and muscle unless protein intake is high enough; losing muscle lowers your BMR, which is exactly what you are trying to avoid. The commonly recommended intake for people who train is 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight a day — for our 70 kg example woman, that is roughly 112 to 154 grams a day.
3. Move More All Day (NEAT)
NEAT — non-exercise activity thermogenesis — is all the movement that is not a workout: walking, standing, taking the stairs, cleaning, fidgeting. It does not raise your BMR, but it is the biggest variable slice of your total daily burn, and the differences between people are enormous: NEAT can account for 100 to 800 calories a day of difference between two people of similar size.
That makes it the fastest lever you have. Our example woman’s lightly active TDEE is 1,395 × 1.375 = 1,918 calories a day; moving up one level to moderately active gives 1,395 × 1.55 = 2,163 — a 245-calorie-a-day difference without a single extra workout. Practical ways to get there: walk 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, stand for part of your workday, and take stairs instead of lifts. None of this changes your BMR, but it changes the number that decides your weight — your TDEE — far more than any BMR trick ever will.
4. Add High-Intensity Interval Training
HIIT — short bursts of hard effort with rest in between — raises your burn in two ways. It burns a lot of calories during the session itself, and it creates an afterburn effect (called EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) that keeps your metabolism elevated for hours afterwards while your body restores oxygen levels, clears metabolic by-products, and repairs muscle.
The afterburn is real but modest: studies typically put it at roughly 6 to 15 percent of the calories burned in the workout, which for a 300-calorie session is about 20 to 45 extra calories spread over the following hours. HIIT also supports muscle retention better than steady-state cardio alone, which protects your BMR while you lose weight. Two short sessions a week — 20 minutes of intervals on a bike, rower, or running track — is enough to get the benefit.
5. Sleep 7 to 9 Hours
Short sleep quietly lowers your burn and raises your appetite at the same time. Sleep deprivation has been shown to reduce resting metabolic rate by roughly 2 to 8 percent, and it shifts the hormones that control hunger — raising ghrelin, which makes you hungry, and lowering leptin, which signals fullness. For our example woman, a 5 percent drop in BMR would cost her about 70 calories a day, while the extra hunger makes her more likely to eat more on top of that.
The fix is unglamorous but effective: 7 to 9 hours a night, on a regular schedule, in a cool dark room, with screens off well before bed. It will not feel like a metabolism intervention, but it protects the BMR you already have — and unlike supplements, it works every time.
6. Do Not Crash Diet
Severe calorie restriction lowers your BMR. When intake drops sharply, the body adapts: it sheds muscle along with fat, reduces the energy spent on movement and heat, and lowers thyroid hormone output. This metabolic adaptation is the main reason crash diets stall after a few weeks and why the weight returns so fast when normal eating resumes — the body is burning less than before, so the old intake is now a surplus.
The safer approach is a modest deficit of 250 to 500 calories a day below your TDEE, which predicts roughly 0.5 to 1 pound a week (a pound of fat stores about 3,500 calories). For our example woman at a TDEE of 1,918, that means eating about 1,418 to 1,668 calories a day — comfortably above her BMR of 1,395 and above the 1,200-calorie floor most guidance uses for women (1,500 for men).
7. Stay Hydrated
Water has a small thermic effect: drinking cold water forces your body to spend a little energy warming it, and well-hydrated cells carry out their metabolic work more efficiently. The effect is modest — research typically finds a short-lived rise in energy expenditure after drinking half a litre of water — so it will never replace strength training or protein. But it is free, it costs nothing to do, and dehydration reliably makes workouts worse, which indirectly costs you the activity calories that matter most. Keep a bottle at your desk, drink a glass with each meal, and treat thirst as a signal rather than an inconvenience.
What the Seven Levers Add Up To
| Lever | What it adds | Time to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Strength training (+5 kg muscle) | About +66 calories a day to BMR | Months |
| More protein (TEF 20–30%) | Tens of calories a day | Days |
| More NEAT (lightly → moderately active) | About +245 calories a day to TDEE | Days |
| HIIT afterburn | About 20–45 calories per session | Hours |
| Good sleep (7–9 hours) | Protects about 70 calories a day of BMR | Days |
| Avoiding crash diets | Prevents BMR dropping by 100+ calories | Weeks |
| Staying hydrated | A few calories a day | Hours |
The pattern is clear: the BMR levers (muscle, sleep, avoiding crash diets) are worth tens of calories each and take months, while the TDEE lever (daily movement) is worth hundreds and works in days. Do both, but do not confuse them. A free basal metabolic rate calculator gives you your starting BMR, and if you know your body fat percentage, the same page’s body fat calculator result shows the lean-mass version. For the full arithmetic, read how to calculate BMR, check your body mass index with our free BMI calculator, and set your intake with our calorie calculator.
FAQ: How to Increase Your BMR
What is the fastest way to increase BMR?
Building muscle is the only way to raise BMR itself by a lasting amount, and it takes months: about 6 extra calories a day per pound of muscle. For faster results, raise your TDEE instead — moving from lightly to moderately active adds about 245 calories a day for a typical woman.
Does eating more increase BMR?
Eating more protein raises the calories spent on digestion, since protein’s thermic effect is 20 to 30 percent. But simply eating more of everything does not raise BMR — it just adds calories in, which is why weight gain usually follows.
Do metabolism-boosting supplements work?
Most have little or no proven effect on BMR beyond caffeine, which raises resting burn slightly and briefly. No supplement replaces strength training, protein, sleep, and daily movement, and some carry real risks — check with a doctor before taking any.
Does drinking cold water increase BMR?
Very slightly and briefly: the body spends a small amount of energy warming the water. The effect is real but tiny, worth a few calories at most. It is a healthy habit, not a metabolism strategy.
Can you increase BMR after 50?
Yes. The age-related decline in BMR is mostly muscle loss, and muscle responds to strength training at any age. A 60-year-old who lifts twice a week can hold a BMR closer to their 40-year-old self than a sedentary 50-year-old. Read our guide to average BMR by age and gender for the numbers.
How long does it take to increase BMR?
Expect months, not days. Noticeable muscle gain takes 8 to 12 weeks of consistent training, and 5 kg of muscle — worth about 66 calories a day — is typically a year’s work. Daily movement and sleep improve your total burn within days, even though they do not change BMR itself.