A fundamental mistake in dieting is the belief that eating less will lead to fat loss. Now scientific evidence suggests this to be entirely WRONG!
The reason lies in our evolution as human beings.
During the past thousands of years our ancestors had to face famines, droughts and shortage of food & water.
Over the course of time the human body has adapted to such a level that when it senses a shortage of food it responds by dramatically decreasing the metabolic rate in order to preserve energy and ensure survival.
The irony of the situation is that when you need to lose fat & severely restrict your food intake it fires the same mechanism in the body which was meant to preserve calories rather than burn calories!
Table of Contents
Burn Fat Fast Secrets of Bodybuilders & Fitness Models Revealed
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could eat whatever you want, blow off working out and still fit in your skinny jeans?
Travel anywhere without feeling awkward in your pants…. It’s finally possible to speed up your metabolism, that little engine in your body that burns calories.
As you age, your metabolism slows down, mostly because you lose around half a pound of muscle every year. If you don’t use the muscle, it atrophies.
That translates into burning about 400 fewer calories each day, which could mean gaining a pound a week.
But there’s plenty you can do to rev your fat-burning furnace back up again.
Burn Fat & Building Muscle
The body normally burns a mix of carbohydrate as glucose and fat for fuel. How much of either depends on your physical activity and if or what you have eaten recently.
When you use more energy than you take in, the body burns stored fat and carbohydrates and then even protein, to fuel your everyday activities even if you are not exercising.
That’s what happens when people starve of course, the body starts to eat itself.
Depending on your family history, your genetics and the way you eat & exercise to create this energy deficit, your body may decide to get conservative and drop your metabolic rate to try to hold onto body weight.
How to burn fat fast? Try Out a New Diet
Our bodies are very complicated living organs and diets such as The Military Diet don’t simply work for everyone.
Needless to say everyone’s body acts differently to each diet or change of food regime. This is why it is important to challenge yourself once in a while with a new diet that has gained some reputation.
The one we highly recommend that has proven itself to work for 70% of the people is Intermittent Fasting.
We made a full review about this method or lifestyle here:
Or here:
Start to Burn Fat First Thing in the Morning
As soon as you wake up in the morning workout for at least 30 minutes to an hour.
Studies show that working out in the morning burns x3 times more fat as opposed to working out at any other time of the day. Why?
During the day your body’s main source of energy is the carbohydrates that you get from eating your meals.
As you sleep at night your body uses up all those carbohydrates as energy for various bodily functions that go on even while you’re still asleep.
When you wake up in the morning your body doesn’t have any carbohydrates as energy to use and it’ll look to burn fat instead for energy.
Another great thing about working out first thing in the morning is that your metabolism gets revved up after your morning workout. Morning workouts keep your metabolism elevated throughout the day.
An elevated metabolism throughout the day only means that you’ll burn more calories and lose more weight.
If you workout at night you may still burn fat while you workout but as soon as you go to sleep your metabolism will slow down and you’ll miss out on all the extra fat that you could’ve burnt during the day, if you just had exercised in the morning.
Other reasons why it’s good to exercise first thing in the morning is that you get the workout out of the way, and working out in the morning will also reduce your level of stress throughout the day.
Take Up a New Sport
Are you like Old Faithful when it comes to your morning walk or evening jog? The more you do an activity, the more your body adapts to it, so you burn fewer calories. If you want to light a fire under your metabolism, consider cross-training.
If you normally walk, try biking instead.
“Since you’re not used to working all those different muscles, it’s a more intense workout, which can translate into a greater metabolic afterburn because your body is working harder to recover and get oxygen to all your tissues”
Says Carol Respell an exercise physiologist for Equinox Fitness Club in New York City.
Building Muscle – Muscle Burns More Fat
Building Muscle is increasingly recommended as a fat-busting tool because some experts say extra muscle burns more energy than body fat at rest, so if you develop more muscle and have a higher muscle to fat ratio than before, you must burn extra energy and more stored fat as a result.
By training to specifically increase your overall strength: Train to create those long, lean, firm muscles, this in turn will replace lost muscle tissue and create a faster metabolism. What this means is that after a strength workout you create muscle.
This muscle when trained consistently and kept at a good level will use stored fat in your body to maintain its firmness. This firmness is maintained during the day, at work, at the beach and best of all while you’re asleep!
So not only is strength training a great activity to directly burn fat, it will keep the heart healthy as you will be raising the heart-rate, you’ll also create & maintain muscle!
Thus making strength training the most effective way of burning fat and keeping it off for the long term.
Weight training has many other benefits for health and performance, we need to get this fat burning thing right in order to develop the best weight loss & performance programs.
Eat Breakfast
Another way to keep your metabolism revved up all day long is to eat breakfast. After you workout in the morning as discussed earlier, just have breakfast and you’ll give your body the perfect 1-2 combination to jumpstart your metabolism.
Eating breakfast in the morning is what gets your metabolism started. Don’t skip breakfast and wait until mid-morning or afternoon to eat, your metabolism will run slower causing you not to burn any extra fat.
Think about this way: Your metabolism is a fireplace that’ll burn fat all day long for you if you operate it correctly. When you eat breakfast you are basically throwing a log onto that fireplace to get it started burning fat.
Eating breakfast will help stop those cravings you may have later on in the day and along with working out in the morning, eating breakfast will also keep you energized throughout the day and lower stress levels.
Burn fat Advanced Tip: Instead of eating only 2 more meals during the day like lunch & dinner, try to eat 4-5 more small mini-meals spaced 2-3 hours apart during the day. Remember the fireplace?
By eating these mini-meals you’ll be throwing just the right amount of “wood” on the fireplace to keep your metabolism burning calories throughout the day.
Don’t shut down your metabolism by eating big lunches or dinners, keep that metabolism of yours burning fat all day long.
Should I Exercise Before Breakfast to Burn Fat?
The answer is ‘not necessarily’, because even though you will burn more fat on an empty stomach, ultimately this will probably make little difference because your energy intake and expenditure & metabolism balances out, more or less, over the 24-hour period.
What really matters is your total energy intake and expenditure, that is, how much you eat and how much you exercise and move in general.
Which Food burns fat?
Foods that are high in protein & fiber are the best kinds of food to eat if you want to burn fat fast. Fiber slows digestion and makes you feel fuller.
This is so important in burning fat and reducing cravings, especially for foods loaded with sugar.
Did you know that it takes more energy to digest protein than it does to digest fat?
So the more protein you eat, the more calories your body burns.
Foods that are rich in Vitamin C have the properties of acting as fat burners.
Limes, lemons, oranges, grapefruit and vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, celery, carrot, watermelon & apple fall into this category.
Broccoli and cabbage contain high quantities of calcium and vitamin C and is also fibrous.
What vitamin C does is it dilutes the fat and renders it less effective. It also becomes easier for such fat to be flushed out of the system.
Pectin is found in apples and mot fresh fruits. This substance is said to be able to limit the fat that is absorbed by the cells. In addition to this , pectin helps in the absorption of watery substances.
The reaction of the watery substances on the cells makes it release fat deposits.
Drink Water
Everyone has heard that water is important for health, but even still, most people don’t drink enough water.
Water is also vital to burn fat as well as maintaining a lean body. After all, our bodies are about 65-70% water.
Water also keeps you from snacking on unhealthy sugary foods and sugar laden soft drinks, as many times when we feel we are hungry, we are actually just dehydrated.
We need water in our bodies more than we need food. The body can survive for much longer without food than without water. Water is like the oil in the engines of our cars.
It is involved in almost every process the body goes through, from digestion to nutrient absorption. It also keeps your energy level up as it prevents dehydration.
Now, this is very important… dehydration will totally kill your chances to burn fat, because the body interprets this as a state of shock. It shifts its focus on getting water and stops doing other things, like burning body fat for energy.
Try this little trick to burn even more calories… drink most of your water in ice cold form.
First of all, it typically tastes better ice cold, and every time you drink an ounce of ice cold water, your body must burn about a calorie in the process of warming the water to your current body temperature.
Now, you can use this to your advantage to burn even more calories each day. Keep your water intake to 100 ounces per day, and you’ll burn an extra 100 calories a day.
Also, add some lemon to your water…this will have positive effects in helping cleanse your liver.
The body needs to be working efficiently if you want to burn fat fast…if your organs, especially the kidneys and liver, are working together in high efficiency, you will find it easier to burn fat!
So keeping yourself hydrated will keep your kidneys operating at a good clip, and your liver will be allowed to do its job of metabolizing stored fat for energy.
Stock Up on Green Tea to burn fat
Green tea isn’t known only for its cancer-fighting benefits.
It can help boost your metabolism too.
People who took green-tea extract three times a day saw their metabolic rate increase by about 5 percent, according to a study published in the December 1999 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
It may be because green tea contains catechin which increases the levels of the metabolism-speeding brain chemical.
Eat Slow at Intervals to Burn Belly Fat
Eating slowly helps overweight people lose weight because one tends to eat less, instead of overeating at a fast pace. Eating fast without chewing food properly make you gain more calories. Why?
Because your stomach does not register how much food you actually intake. This is why you keep eating without feeling full and consuming extra calories.
As a result, it causes you stomach problems, such as indigestion, stomach bloating, and naturally you end up having a big stomach.
On the other hand, depriving yourself of food or skipping meals will only slow your metabolism and the ability to burn stored body fat, especially belly fat.
Your body switches into survival mode and slows itself down as it interprets it as a possible famine.
In other words, you’ll cause a Basal Metabolic Rate decrease, and your body will not want to burn fat or any excess calories.
Those excess calories become body fat. This is why we tend to have a big belly. Imagine, if you keep eating fast, storing more calories than you could burn?
The Solution: Eat slowly, chew your meals, don’t swallow, don’t skip meals and eat at least every 3 hours.
Avoid Alcohol
Want to keep your favorite meals from going straight to your hips, thighs or belly? Wash them down with water, not wine.
Alcohol slows your metabolism by depressing the central nervous system. A British study found that when alcohol was added to a high-fat, high-calorie meal, less dietary fat was burned off and more was stored as body fat.
Get Enough Sleep
A study at the University of Chicago Medical Center found that people who got only four hours of sleep had much more difficulty processing carbs. The culprit?
Increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
When you’re exhausted, your body lacks the energy to do its normal day-to-day functions, which includes burning fat or calories efficiently. So the best way to make sure your metabolism runs smoothly is to get eight to ten hours of sleep every night.
My Burn Fat Checklist
-
- Get Enough Sleep (at least 8 hours)
- Workout for at least 30 minutes after waking up in the morning
- Eat a healthy breakfast
- Increase muscle with weight training. Extra muscle helps to burn fat
- Do aerobic exercise – Considering how much energy you’d use in an hour of either type of exercise, weights or cardio
- Try high-intensity cardio
- Eat food that burns fat
- Eat Slow & at Intervals
- Avoid Alcohol
- Before trying a new diet or pills, learn the natural ways to burn fat fast.
How to Burn Fat – Final Words
Use the above tips to burn fat so you could fit into that dress for an upcoming event like a wedding or reunion, or to impress that special someone.
Whatever your fitness goal is, following these tips will insure you’re on the right & natural way to burn fat fast.