Speed up your fat loss

culled from:tescohealthandwellbeing.com

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." - Benjamin Disraeli
Have you tried to lose body fat, just to find it comes off at a snail's pace? If you work out and eat less calories, you can lose up to 2 pounds per week. That’s a lot of fat loss over one year.
Even if you have been consistent, metabolism-boosting tips won't go astray. Small actions may help notch up steady fat loss.

Eat more often

That’s right, you need to eat more often, but don’t increase your total calories. For example, split your main meals into five or six smaller meals and eat every three hours. Food can actually help burn body fat, but it's all about timing.
When you eat a large meal such as a big bowl of pasta, you raise your blood sugar level which causes your body to increase insulin. This only serves to make you fat. If you break up your meals into smaller ones you will have an improved control over your blood sugar - this puts you in a better position to lose fat.

Break up your workout

You may be busy and the thought of exercising is just another stress in your life. With family responsibilities, work and financial pressures, exercise just sounds like something other people do. However, research has proven that two short bouts of exercise stimulates the metabolism more than one longer workout.
Go for a brisk 15 minute walk first thing in the morning before work and then another one at lunch time. Do this five days per week and you’ll see progress at the end of 30 days.

Eat breakfast

Although this is an obvious one, it's amazing how many people think they’re doing the right thing by skipping breakfast. You need to think of your body from the inside-out. The human body’s main goal is survival. If it senses any type of emergency, it will do everything in its power to keep you alive.
If you sleep through the night and then deprive the body of food in the morning, what do you think the body is sensing at this point? That’s right, it senses a potential famine so it holds onto stored body fat. Calories from food represent heat, so use the heat to rev up your metabolism.

Cycle calories

For three days, consume your minimum calorie requirement based on your height, weight and goals. Then, on day number four, increase your calories by an additional 400 (nutritious foods only).
For example, if you’re losing fat by consuming 1200 calories per day, simply raise your calories to 1600 on day four. This technique can actually get the metabolism racing and stimulate additional fat loss. Just remember that the extra calories must come from good sources of protein, carbohydrates and fats - not pizza.

Drink lots of water

Muscles and other tissues are made up of approximately 80% water. If you limit your water intake, the body will retain water and make you feel like the "queen or king of bloat."
You know how absolutely awful it feels to be bloated. It doesn’t take much for this to happen - the body only needs to be dehydrated by approximately 2%. Staying hydrated will release some excess water trapped in the body and most likely reduce your weight by a few pounds.

Exercise in the morning

If you can fit it into your schedule, exercise in the morning. People who exercise consistently in the morning find that exercise at this time regulates their appetite all day long and they start the day with a boost to the metabolism.

Do cardio interval training

Cardio interval training is simply short bursts of high-intensity exercise combined with more moderate intensity within the same workout. Studies have shown that people who do interval training twice a week (in addition to two other days of lower intensity cardio) lose twice as much weight as those who just do a moderate cardio workout.
You can easily incorporate interval training into your workout by doing a 45-second burst on the stationary bike - every four to five minutes. You can also add a 45-second super brisk walk to your treadmill workout again every 4-5 minutes. Your body will start to work harder and will be forced to burn more calories. In addition, you won’t need to do more than a 25 total minute workout. But try to get two additional days during the week of lower intensity cardio as well.

Read instead of watch TV

Researchers at Memphis State University monitored 32 girls as they watched a half-hour television program. They found their metabolic rates dropped by as much as 16% below resting metabolic rate. In other words, they burned fewer calories watching TV than they did just by reading.

Drink green tea

Green tea is a popular tea from Japan that has numerous health benefits, including weight loss. It’s not 100% certain how green tea helps one to lose fat, but it appears to increase the amount of calories the body burns - not necessarily because of the small amounts of caffeine it contains, but due to a compound abbreviated as EGCG.

Practice hydrotherapy

This could have been placed in the "drink lots of water" section but deserves its own section due to its efficiency. First thing in the morning, drink a glass of very cold water on an empty stomach. Don’t eat breakfast for at least 30 minutes. The cold water will force your body to raise its core temperature, thereby stimulating your metabolism and excreting any excess water.
You may find that you lose two pounds the first month you try this. If you want to take it a step further, do the same thing at lunch. Just make sure to wait the 30 minutes prior to eating. Remember though, if you’re consuming excess calories each day, this won’t work!