10 Ways to Burn Calories and Fight Fat

You can make weight loss quicker and easier by increasing your metabolic rate and burning more calories.You can do quite a lot to speed up your metabolism – the secret of burning calories lies in knowing what determines your metabolic rate and what you can do to influence it. You can speed up your rate of burning calories using some, or all, of the following tactics:

Eat Little and Often

You’ve probably heard that eating small meals throughout the day is how you win the battle of the bulge. The claim is that frequent snacking, as long as it’s healthy, keeps your metabolism humming, staves off hunger, and controls blood sugar.Provided your small meals don’t degenerate into high fat, high sugar snacks, eating little and often can also help to control hunger and make you less likely binge.While eating many meals may not rev up your metabolism or make you burn fat, experts say it could help you in other ways. The longer you wait between meals, the hungrier you get, and then you’re more likely to overeat.

Move More

An average person burns around 30% of calories through daily activity. Simply being aware of this fact and taking every opportunity to move can make quite a dramatic difference to the amount of calories you burn.You’ll find lots of opportunities for burning more calories if you remember that you’re looking for them! Keep thinking ‘keep moving’.

 Here’s some ideas for burning calories:

• Swing your legs
• Drum your fingers
• Stand up and stretch
• Move your head from side to side
• Change position
• Use the upstairs loo
• Tap your feet
• Clench your muscles

Stand up and move around—take the stairs instead of the elevator, and make your 15-minute coffee break a brisk walk around the block. Extra movement, no matter how trivial, contributes to your overall calorie-burning for the day and adds up over time.

Do Strength Training to Build Muscle

When you exercise, you use muscle. This helps build muscle mass, and muscle tissue burns more calories even when you're at rest. According to a study, 10 pounds of muscle would burn 50 calories in a day spent at rest, while 10 pounds of fat would burn 20 calories.

Training with weights just 3 times a week for around 20 minutes is enough to build muscle. Not only will you be burning more calories, you’ll look better – whatever your weight is.

Aerobic Exercise

Studies have shown that high-intensity exercise makes you burn more calories for several hours afterwards.

Try 30 minute sessions of heart rate raising exercise, such as vigorous walking, step aerobics, jogging, cycling or swimming, 3-4 times a week.

Eat Low-Fat Dairy

The calcium from low-fat dairy doesn't specifically help burn more calories, but it may do a couple of things to help discourage body fat. Results from a recent study suggest that we might absorb fewer fat calories from a meal when we consume calcium from low-fat dairy.

In another recent study, eating more calcium-rich foods -- including low-fat dairy products -- appeared to be linked to lower amounts of belly fat, particularly in young adult white males.

Drink 8 Cups of Water a Day

Drinking almost eight cups of water (2 liters) may help burn nearly 300 extra calories a day, according to findings of a small study from Germany. That may not sound like much, but it could add up to 700 calories a week or 2,800 calories a month. And that's by doing something we should do anyway to keep our intestines and kidneys happy, and to help keep us from confusing thirst with hunger.

Don't Skip Breakfast 

Evidence supporting a link between skipping breakfast and increased body weight is growing, according to a recent editorial in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

Some research has shown that when people skip breakfast, they tend to eat more calories by the end of the day. Other studies have suggested that skipping breakfast is associated with a higher body mass index in teens.

While we could use more research in this area, eating a healthy breakfast certainly makes sense as a lifestyle habit.

Go Vegan
If you'd like to maximize the weight-loss effects you can get it from a vegan diet. Search for vegan alternatives to your favorite meals and snacks. These recipes should be made up (as much as possible) of whole foods. Make sure that vegetables make up at least half of each meal.

Learn to trust your body; eat only when you feel hungry, and stop eating when you feel full (this takes some time to getting used to, so don't fret if you don't succeed right away; it gets easier with time)!

Of course, it's not always easy to find or afford vegan products. But in general, conventionally grown items that you peel—avocado, grapefruit, bananas—are fine. But choose organic when buying celery, peaches, strawberries, apples, blueberries, nectarines, sweet bell peppers, spinach, kale and collard greens, cherries, potatoes, and imported grapes; they tend to have the highest levels of nutrition.

Eat The Heat

There is evidence to show that spices, especially chili, can raise the metabolic rate by up to 50% for up to 3 hours after you’ve eaten a spicy meal.It turns out that capsaicin, the compound that gives chili peppers their heat, can also fire up your metabolism.

Drink Caffeinated Tea