We all want to be at a healthy weight in order to look and feel our best. But most of the time, maintaining our happy/healthy weight is easier said than done. As a health coach, I often hear that losing weight is one of the most common health goals of my patients.
When we eat food, it's either stored in our body as fat or burned for energy! Thankfully, there are many easy hacks you can implement in your daily life to help you burn more fat—without a crazy diet, weight loss pills, nonstop workouts, or overly restrictive eating:
1. Drink more water.
This tip makes sense when you learn that over half of your body is made up of water. You lose water through eating, sweating, and breathing, so it is absolutely necessary to be adequately hydrated. Plus, drinking at least eight cups of water helps you burn calories.
2. Try intermittent fasting.
Limiting your food intake to certain periods of time can stabilize blood sugar and decrease inflammation, which both encourage fat burning. Fasting also lowers your hunger hormone ghrelin to help curb cravings for inflammatory, sugary foods.
3. Don't fear fat.
By limiting your carbohydrate intake and upping your healthy fats, you’ll turn your body from a sugar burner to a fat burner. This means that you train your metabolism to move away from relying on glucose for fuel, and instead, your body will now turn to its fat stores for energy. A ketogenic diet that focuses on lots of healthy fat, moderate protein, and fewer carbohydrates is a great tool to make sure you are getting in the right macronutrients for your body.
4. Drink more tea.
Thermogenesis is a bodily process that produces heat, and it can also increase the number of calories you burn. Certain compounds in foods contain naturally occurring thermogenic nutrients. Catechins in green tea can boost fat-burning between 10 and 20%.
5. Eat more spicy foods.
Spicy foods such as chili peppers contain a compound known as capsaicin, which has been show to speed up metabolism, burn fat, and reduce appetite.
6. Sweat it out.
Activity that induces sweating or infrared saunas are a great way to lose weight and also sweating is your body’s way of releasing toxins, you’ll also be detoxing and lowering inflammation that can contribute to common health problems. So treat yourself to a sauna if you don't like cardio!
7. Add in a probiotic.
Your gut controls almost every aspect of your health, including your weight. Research has linked a lower microbiome diversity to being overweight, and people who struggle with weight loss resistance are more likely to have higher amounts of the bad bacteria and lower amounts of the beneficial bacteria. Luckily, lots of fermented foods and a probiotics can help re-colonize the gut with good bacteria.
8. Try strength training.
Muscle burns more energy than fat, so the more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn, even when you are sitting still. Strength training can also improve resting metabolic rate, which boosts metabolism.
9. Limit your alcoholic drinks.
Each time you drink alcohol, your body has to stop and take time to metabolize it by filtering it through your liver, causing your metabolism to slow down since it is taking energy away from metabolizing fats and sugars. In fact research shows, after just one alcoholic beverage, your fat burning is decreased by 73 percent.
10. Get chilly.
According to research, regularly exposing yourself to cold temperatures helps you burn more fat. So those chilly summer swims and a perfect boost for extra weight loss.
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