MANET is severely energy constrained, due to the capricious mobility rate and the deployed hostile environment. The most energy consuming activity of mobile sensors is the process of routing. Hence, the energy efficient routing is an evergreen research topic for MANET. Additionally, the energy efficient routing algorithm must be as lightweight as possible to conserve the energy. Considering these points, this work aims to present an energy efficient, trustworthy route selection algorithm based on trust index. The trust index is formed by considering the trust metrics such as energy backup, packet forwarding rate and node loyalty. The trust index is considered as the fitness value for the route selection algorithm. The route selection algorithm is based on the metaheuristic algorithms such as Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) and Whale Optimization (WO) algorithms. The performance of the proposed work is analysed in terms of packet delivery rate, average loyalty, energy efficiency and network lifetime. The proposed work shows better performance than the comparative approaches with increased energy efficiency and thereby network lifetime.