General Tips
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1. Lift Heavy
Lifting heavy for fewer reps (as opposed to lifting light for many reps) will lead to a rise in resting metabolic rate, and thus increase calories lost throughout the day.
Though many believe higher rep exercises will increase fat loss, there are clear benefits of lifting heavy to increase fat loss when not exercising.
Complimentary to the point above, high rep and low weight exercises will increase calories lost during your workout.
Therefore it is best to mix up workouts to ensure some exercises have high reps and others low reps.
3. Reduce Rest Periods Between Sets
Muscles recover when they’re not working, so cutting down your between-sets rest periods makes the exercise harder because you won’t be fully recovered when beginning your next set.
It’s best to rest for about 30-60 seconds between sets to maximize fat loss, though sometimes it’s best to listen to your body.
4. Forced Reps
This involves going past muscle failure, which can be achieved with a spotter, using drop sets or static contractions. This helps to increase growth hormone during your workouts.
See other ways here
5. Free Weights
Free weights have the added bonus of making you also you stability muscles that machines don’t quite engage. This leads to more calories lost during exercises.
6. Listen To Music
7. Cardio After Weights!
Japanese researchers found that cardio after resistance training lead to significantly more fat burnt than performing cardio first.
It was also noted that fat-burning was maximized during the first 15 minutes of cardio following the weight workout.
For more on the benefits of performing cardio after your weights training see here.
8. HIIT
It is well known that the best way to burn fat with cardio is with high intensity interval training. It reduces blood sugar and insulin level, which both aid in increasing fat loss.
For more information visit our HIIT page.
9. Train Later
Doing cardio later in the day (6 pm) as opposed in the morning or afternoon leads to a higher post workout metabolic rate.
10. Try Different Forms of Cardio
Performing different types of cardio is a good way to continually shocking your body and guarantee a good workout. This could be by taking up classes or picking up different sports (martial arts, football, squash).
11. Keep Active
Try not to sit down and watch TV or use the computer for long periods of time as this may adversely affect your ability to burn fat.
Though “stay active” sounds obvious in attempting to lose fat, it is beneficial to get up every so often, whether to stretch or get a drink.
12. Take Note of Your Food (or Pictures)
As a mental trigger, taking pictures of your food and periodically reviewing them allows you to be critical of what you eat to try and ensure a healthy diet.
13. Sleep 7-9 Hours
Sleeping less than 7 hours causes an imbalance of hormones, leptin and ghrelin.
Leptin increases metabolic rate and decreases hunger while ghrelin increases hunger.
Lack of sleep can alter these hormones causing a decrease in leptin and increase in ghrelin.
A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine (December 2004) discovered that sleep restriction was associated with an 18% decrease in leptin and 28% increase in ghrelin in 12 healthy male subjects.
Hunger and appetite for high calorie dense foods containing high amounts of carbohydrates increased 33-45%.
Sleep is also a time of rest for your entire body and provides you with ample time to recover from your day, giving your immune system it's best chance to fight off germs.
Research at Stanford University discovered that “women with breast cancer whose cortisol cycle is disrupted with peak levels in the afternoon rather than dawn die earlier from the disease.” The same researcher also found that “night shift workers have a higher rate of breast cancer than women with normal sleep hours.”Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, peaks in the morning, aids in various physiological functions and helps supply energy for the day. Cortisol begins to drop as evening approaches allowing sleep. People who secrete more cortisol later in the day tend to have difficulty falling asleep and thus have disrupted sleep patterns leading to sleep deprivation and fatigue. An increase or prolonged levels of cortisol has been linked to various health issues.
Fatigue also prevents you from having the energy needed for physical activity or at least prevents you from performing as well or intense. Workouts are likely to be mediocre and without quality sleep, particularly “deep sleep,” growth hormones will experience a decline in production.
Not only this, but sleep is critical for recovery from workouts.
14. Chewing Gum
Chewing gum has been known to decrease hunger and stress (and stress eating), however recent studies seem inconclusive.
15. Have Fun with Active Games
Active games such as Zumba Fitness, Dance Dance Revolution, Just Dance or Guitar Hero (if you get really into it) can provide a great way to burn additional calories.
16. Improve Your Contractions
Start Light
To ensure full contraction is used for each rep start on a low weight and gradually go heavier. If you start seeing yourself sacrifice form for weight, you’re probably working too heavy and need to take some weight off.
Go Slow
Reach The Peak
Peak contraction involves squeezing your muscles at the top of every rep for a second or two.
