These healthy habits may help give your body a calorie-burning boost.
The truth seems to be that the No. 1 way to burn more calories is the old-fashioned way -- by moving more. Now that the spring weather is here and swim suit season is right around the corner, it's time to get out and get moving! Studies indicate that we do tend to eat more during the winter months, with the average person gaining at least 1 to 2 pounds -- and those who are already overweight likely to gain a lot more. Soo...here are eight possible ways to burn more calories and fight fat:
1. Exercise to Burn Calories
The more time spent exercising and the more vigorous the exercise, the more calories will be burned. Obviously, when you exercise, your body burns calories to fuel your activity. But exercise is the gift that keeps on giving. That's because even after your workout has ended, your body is still burning more calories.
2. 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 -- than body fat. 10 pounds of muscle would burn 50 calories in a day spent at rest, while 10 pounds of fat would burn 20 calories.
The most effective way to increase metabolism and burn more calories is by aerobic exercise and strength training. Both are important.
Strength training becomes especially important as we get older, when our metabolisms tend to slow down. One way to stop this is to add some strength training to your workout at least a couple of times a week. The largest muscles (and therefore the largest calorie burners) are in the thighs, abdomen, chest, and arms.
3. Drink Caffeinated Green or Black Tea
Caffeine is a stimulant, and stimulants tend to increase the calories you burn. One likely reason is that they give you the short-term impression that you have more energy, which could mean you move more. Caffeine may also cause metabolic changes in the body that can result in more calories burned.
Even older studies have suggested that 250 milligrams of caffeine consumed with a meal can increase the calories spent metabolizing the meal by 10%.
Over the past few years, some studies have hinted that green or black tea may have benefits beyond the caffeine they contain. One study noted a reduction in food intake in rats that were given a polyphenol found in green tea. Another study, in humans, concluded green tea had heat-producing and calorie-burning properties beyond what can be explained by caffeine. When 31 healthy young men and women were given three servings of a beverage containing green tea catechins, caffeine, and calcium for three days, their 24-hour energy expenditure increased by 4.6%, according to the research from Lausanne University in Switzerland.
Drinking tea with meals may have another fat-fighting effect. Tea extract may interfere with the body's absorption of carbohydrate when consumed in the same meal, according to a study published in the September 2006 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
While all these possible effects are slight, there is yet another bonus to drinking tea. Having a zero-calorie cup of tea instead of a beverage with calories (like a soda) will certainly reduce the number of calories you take in.
4. Eat Smaller, More Frequent Meals
Every time you eat a meal or snack, your gastrointestinal tract turns on, so to speak, and starts digesting food and absorbing nutrients. It costs calories to fire up the human digestion machine, so it makes sense that the more small meals or snacks you eat through the day, the more calories you'd burn.
5. 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.
Eating a healthy breakfast certainly makes sense as a lifestyle habit.
6. 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 Danish study suggest that we might absorb fewer fat calories from a meal when we consume calcium from low-fat dairy.
7. Drink 8 Cups of Water a Day
Just about everything you call on your body to do burns calories, including absorbing and utilizing water while maintaining fluid balance (sometimes by excreting excess).
Drinking almost eight cups of water (2 liters) may help burn nearly 100 extra calories a day. 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.
8. Fidget
Any type of movement requires energy, and fidgeting definitely qualifies as movement. Older studies suggest additional calories can be burned each day with fidgeting.
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