With summer right around the corner, following a few tactics can help you achieve the best look possible before you slip back into those shorts, tanks, tees, and swimsuits. These include: raising your metabolism, building muscle and improving your nutrition.

Your metabolic rate is the rate at which your body burns calories. Burning more calories than consumed is the way to lose weight. You burn calories to provide energy for three main functions:

Basal Metabolic Rate: This is the amount of calories you burn just by being alive, even when you’re doing nothing. It accounts for approximately 60 percent of calories you burn.

Burning Calories for Activity: This is the energy used during movement from lifting your arm to buttoning your shirt to cleaning house. This accounts for approximately 30 percent of the calories you burn.

Dietary Thermogenesis: The calories burned in the process of eating, digesting, absorbing and using food account for approximately 10 percent of the calories you burn.

You can influence all of these factors and speed up your rate of burning calories using the following tactics:

– Build muscle: Increase the amount of muscle in your body. For every pound of muscle, your body uses around 50 calories a day. Leaner is better, as lean tissue is “active.” Fatty tissue just hangs around, literally, while lean tissue burns calories.

– Be active: The average person burns about 30 percent of calories through daily activity. Taking every opportunity to move can make quite a difference in the amount of calories you burn.

– Eat spicy foods: Spices, especially chili, can raise metabolic rate by up to 50 percent for up to three hours after you’ve eaten a spicy meal. I love spicy foods, and I notice when I eat them, that they tend to make me perspire, meaning my metabolism is ablaze!

– Aerobic exercise: High-intensity exercise makes you burn more calories during exercise and for several hours afterwards. The “after burn” is actually excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. After exercise, the body must use increased amounts of oxygen to replenish energy supplies, lower tissue temperatures and return the body to a resting state. Getting your heart rate up is one of the keys to the calorie-burn kingdom.

– Eat little, often: Eating healthy, small meals will keep your metabolism moving faster than larger, less frequent meals and helps to control hunger, making you less likely to binge. Start with a balanced breakfast. Skipping this meal is the worst thing you can do, as it tells your body that it is in starve mode; so it slows metabolically, storing fat, waiting for its next intake of nutrition to burn for energy. The goal is to burn calories around the clock by teaching the body that it gets fed every two to four hours. What smart snacks can you transport from home for your day out to keep the calorie burn on high? Fruits and nuts, powerbars, protein drinks, yogurts, the list is endless, but planning ahead is required.

These are five sure-fire ways to get you lean and toned for that best summer look possible.