Go look in the mirror. Really look. Are there spots that you wish didn’t have as much fat?
Probably. But that’s okay, because we’re basically all in the same boat. Who couldn’t loose some weight here or there. Maybe you have just a little bit of stubborn fat you can’t burn. Or perhaps the extended quarantine has left you with a few added pounds that you’d like to shred, but you’re struggling with dropping the weight that crept up while stuck inside the house.
Well don’t worry. You can burn fat fast. With a combination of diet and exercise you can torch the fat storage on your body and get yourself either back to your pre-quarantine self, or help you get to the weight you’ve always wanted. So if you’re looking to burn fat fast here is what you need to know.
Burn Fat Fast and Effectively
Boost That Metabolism
Your body burns a certain amount of energy throughout the day. When your metabolic rate is firing on all cylinders you will burn more calories while during the exact same tasks. Essentially, you’re burning more calories without doing any more work. And if you want to burn fat fast there really is no better way to do this than to super-charge your metabolism.
But what exactly can you do to boost your metabolism?
You actually don’t have to do all that much than what you’re probably doing now. And these slight tweaks will help you burn dozens, if not hundreds of more calories every day. Just think about it. If you burn an extra 100 or 200 calories a day simply from boosting your metabolism you will be able to drop a few pounds a month, all without changing your workout habits or even your diet.
First of all, you want to drink water when you wake up.
Not only does this help boost your metabolic rate but it also helps hydrate your body. You’ve probably gone a good six to eight hours without drinking any water. And yet, at the same time, your body performs most of its repairs at night. This means it needs excess water and proteins to repair the damage you’ve sustained during the day.
Drinking water first thing helps with all of this. Keeping a glass of water by your bed is helpful. Extremely cold water is hard to drink first thing. Room temperature water is far easier to drink right out of bed.
After waking up you will want to drink water throughout the day as well. According to the International Association for the Study of Obesity (2011), you will boost your metabolic rate by up to 30 percent for an hour after drinking 17 ounces of water (half a liter). There have been some studies that indicate cold water forces your body to work harder to process it, which means you’ll burn more calories. So while you should opt into warmer water first thing in the morning, cold water the rest of the day is the way to go.
When not drinking water you will want to focus on either consuming green tea or coffee.
When you drink green tea you may boost your metabolism by up to five percent. Green tea also has a number of other health benefits associated with it, so it really is a win-win whenever you drink green tea. If green tea isn’t your think you can go the way of coffee.
Coffee has the ability to boost your metabolic rate by over 10 percent.
However, you must avoid adding cream or sugar to your coffee. It doesn’t do you much good in your hunt for burning calories if you’re drinking in a few hundred every time you drink coffee (American Society for Clinical Nutrition).
If you must add something to your coffee to help with the taste opt for cinnamon. Cinnamon doesn’t have the calories as sugar, and it is also a natural metabolic booster. In fact, coffee with cinnamon is actually better for you than just black coffee straight up.
You should also consider spicing up your food. Spice is another natural metabolic booster (similar to the cinnamon). During a recent clinical trial published in The British Journal of Nutrition (2012), individuals took spice capsules with their meals. This helped burn an added 10 calories per meal. Over the course of a year this will equate to dropping a few extra pounds by literally doing nothing but adding some spice to your food.
Whether hot sauce, a pepper spice, or something similar, this is a great way to increase your metabolism.
Just make sure you opt for something that isn’t loaded with calories. Most hot sauces will have anywhere from zero to five calories per serving. If you shoot for something with zero calories you’ll maximize your fat burn potential.
Cut Unnecessary Calories
The fastest way to lose weight is to adjust your diet. However, what you don’t want to do is go onto some crazy, super limited diet where you’re doing nothing but drinking water with lemon juice and pepper inside of it. That’s not something you can sustain.
Most of these crazy diets will help you shed water weight for the first few days, but the extreme calorie restrictions will actually end up eating away at your muscle tissue, causing you not to lose fat but muscle. And when you lose muscle you will actually not burn as many calories during the day (because larger muscles burn more calories).
So don’t fall into the trap of extreme dieting, fad diets, or any kind of yo-yo dieting. None of these will add up to prolonged success. It doesn’t do you much good to drop weight only to put it all right back on after a few weeks. Instead, we’ll look at ways to slash calories out of your diet without forcing you to make too many drastic changes.
You’ll want to start by cutting empty beverage calories out of your diet.
Slash juices, sodas, and alcohol from your diet. If you consume just two of these a day you will instantly slash about 300 calories or so from your daily diet. After that you’ll want to remove creamy sauces from your diet. So no ranch, Caesar, or other creamy dressings. You also need to avoid adding cream and sugar to beverages. Again, you do all of these things and you’ll slash several hundred calories from your diet.
Next, you’ll want to remove sugary foods. Check the labeling of your food to make sure it doesn’t have large amounts of sugar.
White brad, for example (especially the plastic-wrapped white bread) has a surprisingly high amount of sugar in it. Cereal is another food item that can have a large amount of sugar in it. Basically, if there is a cartoon character on the box it’s probably loaded with sugar. So if you do eat cereal make sure to check the packaging.
After making these changes you should move to meals that consist of high protein, low calorie meals (like a chicken salad with a vinegarette dressing). As long as you ditch heavily processed foods or deep fried foods you will cut a hefty amount of calories while helping your body improve it’s ability to remain feeling full while also delivering high quality foods and energy to the rest of your body.
Boosting Calorie Burns With Your Workout
Naturally you probably already know you should workout if you want to burn off that excess weight. Yes, you’re going to shed more calories by making adjustments in the kitchen than at the gym.
It’s far easier to avoid drinking 200 calories worth of soda than workout out for 30 minutes to burn the same amount. But with that said, if you really want to increase your calorie burn and drop more weight you will want to focus on exercising.
However, not all exercises are created equal when you want to burn fat fast. There are a handful of workout options you will want to consider to really maximize your ability to burn more calories, both in the short term and in the long term.
For starters, you need to be doing resistance training with weights. If you haven’t started yet now is the time. Now, on an hour by hour basis you do burn more calories with cardio.
However, the main perks when training with weights is your body will continue burning calories long after you have finished exercising.
This is because wen you train with weights you will cause microscopic tears within the fiber of your muscles. When this happens your body will need to move into action in order to repair these damaged areas. It takes energy for your body to do this as it converts the protein you consumed into your muscle. Now, you don’t need to worry about your muscles becoming bulky.
If this is something you don’t want to happen you just need to watch your protein intake. If you want to gain muscle you will want to consume around a gram of protein per pound you weigh. If you don’t want to bulk up cut this to about a third and you’ll be fine. All you need to really be doing is making sure you’re working out with weights in order to damage your muscle fiber. As long as you do this you’ll maximize your ability to burn calories long after you finished your weight lifting workout (NBC News, 2018).
This doesn’t mean you should completely avoid cardio. You just need to know what kind of cardio is best for blasting away weight. There are all kinds of cardio options, but for an optimal calorie burn you will want to take advantage of high intensity interval training, or HIIT. This kind of training is done when you go all out on a workout for 20 seconds or so, then slow it down to a crawl for another 30 or 40 seconds, then repeat the process.
You can switch up the durations for what you’re doing, but the purpose of this is to force your heart rate to rapidly elevate, then to give it time to come back own. This up and down movement will strengthen your heart. It will also help you burn more calories because it keeps your body guessing as to what you’re doing and what will be coming next.
It is important to keep your body guessing.
Once it knows what to expect it will begin to retain calories. Your body is a well oiled machine and will do what it can to retain calories and get the most out of the calories it us consuming and burning through. That is why if you perform the same workout every day over an extended period of time you won’t net the same kind of results. Instead, switch it up.
Try to switch up your HIIT routines. You can jump rope one day and then use a medicine ball or jog the next day. The point is you need to keep your body guessing. Doing this also helps keep your workouts interesting. We’ve all run into those workout ruts where we grow tired of the same workouts performed each and every day. Thankfully you won’t have to worry about this kind of an issue with HIIT routines.
In Conclusion
When you want to burn weight the majority of this is going to come from your diet. As the saying goes, abs are made in the kitchen. However, with the right combination of working out and your diet it is possible for you to torch the fat you have. Whether you’re looking to burn through just a few pounds or weight you’ve been carrying for most of your life you can do it.
You just need to follow these tips. From making a few slight adjustments to your diet to adding in some new workout routines, you have the ability to really take control of your physical appearance and finally shed the weight you’ve been carrying once and for all.
-Terry Asher
Terry Asher
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