17 ways to burn more calories.
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Everyone knows that we need to burn more calories than we eat to lose weight. But what are calories? Why is it we can lose weight by burning calories? How are calories being burnt?
Genetics matter. They determine if your eyes are blue, brown or green. Genetics decide how long your hair will last and if you can get a good tan.
Genetics are also responsible for how fast or slow your metabolism runs. Your resting metabolic rate accounts for 60-75 percent of the total calories you burn every day.
Calorie is a measurement of heat. It is the amount of energy that is required to raise one milliliter of water by one degree Celsius. Calorie measures the amount of heat or energy that is released when you burn food down.
But the remaining 25-40 percent YOU have control over. Here are 17 things you can do to give your metabolism a boost.
Eating burns calories. Dietary Thermogenesis (the act of chewing and digesting food) burns approximately 10 percent of everything you eat.
Calories are burnt through a complicated process that oxidizes food to its basic components. For example, if you burn a sugar, it will turn into carbon dioxide. However in the body, the food burnt is converted to forms of energy.
1) Never skip breakfast. When you first wake up your body generally hasn’t had food in several hours, so your metabolism slows down to conserve energy. Eating breakfast boosts your metabolism and helps you burn up to 10 percent more calories doing your morning activities.
2)Cut down on sugar. Too much sugar can spike your insulin levels. Increased insulin tells your body to stop metabolizing fat and start storing it instead.
So therefore when you consume food, the food is broken down and stored as adipose fat or glycogen (which are stored in liver and muscles cells) to be burnt for energy later. Your body prefers to burn glycogen as its first choice of energy rather than body fat when you expand energy such as exercising.
3) Eat more protein. Your body burns nearly twice as many calories digesting protein rich foods because of all the work your liver has to do assimilating and synthesizing the amino acids.
4) Eat smaller portions, more frequently through the day. Digesting food burns calories, so if you eat small meals throughout the day you’ll keep your inner furnace burning more consistently. Small frequent meals have the added bonus of helping you avoid that “starving” feeling and subsequent food binges.
The more muscles you have in your body, the more calories you will burn. The more calories you burnt, the more weight you will lose. This is because muscle cells are metabolically active whereas body fats are not because fat cells do not have much functionality and are mostly inactive.
5) Spice up your food. Bay leaves, chili pepper, cloves, ginger and turmeric have all been clinically shown to increase metabolism. Add them liberally to your meals.
6) Sprinkle Вј to a full teaspoon of cinnamon on your food. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that the most active compound in cinnamon, methylhydroxy chalcone polymer, increased glucose metabolism roughly 20-fold in a test tube assay of fat cells.
Different food categories carry different amount of calories. For example, a gram of protein or carbohydrate has about four calories but a gram of fat packs a whopping nine calories. It is thus a no brainer that the more fat you eat the more calories your body will store.
7) Lose weight slowly. If you go on a crash diet your body’s homeostatic mechanisms think you’re starving and they’ll slow your metabolism down to protect you.
8) Drink green tea. In clinical trials green tea was shown to boost metabolism and burn fat at greater levels than could simply be explained by any caffeine content.
Some people raise their metabolic rate by eating many smaller meals a day instead of three big meals. By eating several 5-6 times a day, your insulin level is also better regulated and less insulin will then be converted to adipose fat.
9) Drink cold fluids. Your body burns extra calories by first heating the fluid up and then digesting it.
Daily activities such as cleaning your house, walking around work, even fidgeting burn another 10 percent of your calories. This is known as Adaptive Thermogenesis.
So how can you burn more calories and further raise your metabolism to naturally burn more calories and body fats? A simple and effective way to burn more calories is to build more muscles as explained above and exercise to expand energy and thus burning more calories in the process.
10) Fidget more. If you’re reading a report, do it while standing. Set an alarm in your office to go off hourly and when it does, get up and stretch or walk to the water fountain.
11) Don’t sit passively on the couch watching TV. Do some situps, pushups or cardio during your favorite shows.
So how do you burn more calories 24 hr a day? Here are some simple steps to burn more calories:
• Build muscles. Muscles are active cells and they are great calorie burners. The more muscles you pack on, the more body calories you will burn because the calories you have eaten will be burned for energy by your muscles. It is estimated that with each pound of muscle you put on, you will burn an extra 35-50 calories everyday even when you are sleeping. You can see how much calories you will burn in a year just by multiplying these figures 365 days of the year. All these calories are burnt just because you have gained a pound of muscle. What if you have more muscles?
Exercise burns 15 to 30 percent of the calories you take in, depending on how long and intense your workouts are.
12) Do cardio first thing in the morning. Elevate your metabolism right after you wake up and you’ll burn calories at a higher rate throughout the day.
It’s estimated that for every 100 calories you burn during exercise, you’ll burn about 15 more from the “afterburn effect.”
13) Build muscle. Muscle boosts your metabolism for up to 2 hours after a workout. As a bonus, the more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate will be.
•Do your cardio exercises in the morning before breakfast. Make sure that your cardio exercises raise your heart rate sufficiently to burn more fat. The exercises must be intensive and will leave you puffing, panting and sweating. This is to make sure that you will continue to burn calories hours after you stopped your cardio exercises.
Every pound of muscle you have burns approximately 50 calories a day. Every pound of fat burns only about 6 calories a day.
14) Use a heart rate monitor to make sure you’re in your fat burning zone while doing cardio. If you’re not in the zone you’re probably not burning as many calories as you could.
15) While weight lifting, take shorter rests between sets. Increase the intensity of your workout and instead of a 2 to 3 minute rest between sets, cut it down to between 30 seconds and a minute.
•Eat 5-6 times a day with about 3 hrs intervals between meals. Make the meals small consisting protein and complex carbohydrate. Complex carbs are carbs that are more difficult to digest so that they do not spike insulin quickly to be converted into body fat. So instead of eating white rice, eat brown rice. Instead of having white bread, substitute it with brown bread instead. Have plenty of fresh leafy fibrous vegetables.
16) Use more compound movements. Bench presses, deadlifts, dips, pull-ups and squats all work more muscles than less complex lifts and end up burning more calories.
17) Don’t forget your legs. Legs contain your body’s largest muscle group, so when you build then up the increased muscle will burn more calories throughout the day.
Please note: We have not recommended ANY metabolic enhancing supplements.
•Do weight training 3 times a week with rest days in between. Do your weight workout in the evenings so that you will continue to burn calories in the night. Workout with compound exercises such as bench presses, squats, lunges, dead lifts etc to activate more muscle fibers and so that these large muscles will carry on burning calories for many more hours into the night. That means you will be losing weight even when you are sleeping… [read more]
Until we are able to obtain independent, double blind clinical trials proving their efficacy and safety, we cannot in good conscience recommend them. For more information on the supplements we have reviewed simply click on SUPPLEMENTS.
Caution: Before beginning any diet or exercise program it is important to check with your doctor or health care professional first.
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