Looking for a few ways to burn fat and get your metabolism working quicker? Burning off fat is not always as easy as eating less and doing more exercise, if you’re not eating the right foods, performing the wrong types of exercise and not getting enough sleep, you could be impeding your fat burning results. Keep reading to learn how to burn fat faster and what tactics you can use to kick start your metabolism.
Here are 4 Tips to Burn Fat Faster!
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Eat The Right Foods, Eliminate The Wrong Foods
The truth is excess fat on the body is mostly attributed to a bad diet. If you’re eating a diet high in refined sugars and carbohydrates this will negatively impact metabolism and stimulate neural addiction to sugar, which will eventually facilitate weight gain. Simply eliminating refined sugars and carbohydrates from your diet can help improve blood sugar balance and help shift your body to burning off more fat. In fact, eating a diet high in refined sugars and carbs leads to over consumption of food, lower sleep quality, as well as whole body inflammation.
Diets that are higher in fibre and lower in sugar have been shown to significantly reduce markers of inflammation. For best results, fill yourself up with whole natural foods, and keep your carbohydrates low!
Eat lean proteins like white fish, eggs, or chicken breast, low glycemic carbohydrates such as dark leafy green vegetables, fresh fruit, and healthy fats from sources such as coconut oil, nuts or avocados. Try carb cycling that helps maximize your body’s carbohydrate stores to help you start burning fat faster!
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Train Legs
Most women shy away from training legs for fear of getting big and bulky. But the reality is us ladies don’t have enough testosterone to ever develop huge amounts of muscle. In addition to getting curves, training legs can also be an asset when it comes to your fat burning. The legs – quads, hams and glutes are the largest area of muscle in your body, and training them burns more calories than training other body parts due to the size and type of muscle.
Muscle is three times more metabolically active than fat, so the more you got the more active your metabolism. In fact, a good workout will even continue to elevate metabolic rate, long after you have left the gym!
One study showed that exercise including a resistance-training program resulted in greater increases in energy expenditure, greater reductions in markers of inflammation and more fat loss versus a group of overweight individuals following only a calorie-restricted diet.
The other benefit of leg training is that it can increase fat oxidation in the areas where we not only hold more of our fat including the quads, hams and glutes due to higher estrogen levels, and less fat cell receptors to activate. Increasing activity increases blood flow, and fuel utilization, which means greater fat oxidation!
For maximum benefits – train your legs by focusing on a combination of compound movements like squats and deadlifts, with exercises that burn a ton of calories like walking dumbbell lunges, squat jumps and pop squats.
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The Right Type of Cardio
High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT is one of the most effective forms of cardiovascular exercise to elicit fat burning fast. Performing short intervals can help access fat more effectively than performing long drawn out cardio sessions. They can also increase mitochondrial demand. Mitochondria are the powerhouse cells that transfer energy, such as fat into ATP allowing us to power our muscles during a workout.
Higher demand for energy by muscles creates a higher demand for mitochondria. HIIT can increase mitochondrial production, within 24 hours post high intensity exercise.
When you have more mitochondrial the body not only goes faster, it also increases turnover of energy to be used as fuel thus increasing fatty acid oxidation. Perform 20 to 30 minutes sessions 2 to 3 times per week, using bike or treadmill.
You must perform short speed intervals at a maximum rate to be effective, followed by a period of low to moderate speed to act as a recovery period. Start with a short 1-minute session of low followed by 30 seconds of moderate to fast pace. As you become more adjusted to performing this type of cardio, you can start to decrease the amount of time between the low and high session, and increase your speed until you reach 80 to 90% of your maximum capacity.
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Sleep More
Inadequate sleep promotes whole body inflammation. In fact, in a clinical setting these inflammatory effects could be observed with reduced sleep in as little as 10 days. When inflammation is high, the body sends out inflammatory signals that can reduce your body’s ability to burn fat and process sugar.
Another study showed that after 2 nights of reduced sleep hunger cravings and appetite increased significantly! Loss of sleep can also result in hormonal imbalances, elevating the catabolic stress hormone cortisol, leading to more fat retention. The body preserves fat because of its high caloric content, versus carbs and protein, and in turn can lead to muscle wasting if not careful.
Aim for 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night to ensure adequate recovery, prevent excess weight gain and help control the inflammatory response!
Until Next Time,
Be Fierce & Rule the World,
Lauren Jacobsen
