The math seems simple: the more calories we burn, the more weight we’ll lose. If we burn 3,500 calories per week, that’s one pound lost! To lose two pounds, we need to burn 7,000 extra calories. Some people choose to do this through dieting, but the best way to reach this goal is through a combination of diet and exercise. Here are several sneaky ways to increase your calorie burn during your workouts.
1. Listen to music!
Make your high-energy playlists before you hit the gym to burn more calories. A Farleigh Dickinson University study found that women who walked to music lost twice as much weight as women who didn’t listen to anything. According to IDEA Health and Fitness Association Fitness Expert Petra Kolber, “Music enhances a workout, it makes you work harder without realizing it, and it makes the workout go by faster. Music takes exercise from just being exercise to being an experience.”
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2. Interval train!
One of the most well-known ways to boost calorie burn is to do what is called “interval training.” You basically want to exercise at full-speed for a minute, followed by a minute of recovery and maintain this for at least 30 minutes, with a five minute warm-up and cool-down. Not only will you burn more calories during your workout, but you’ll continue burning more calories for up to 24 hours after the fact.
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3. Build muscle!
According to Yale Food Policy Researcher Christopher Wharton PhD, 10 pounds of muscle burns 50 calories a day while at rest, whereas 10 pounds of fat would only burn 20 calories. Therefore, it stands to reason that you’ll burn more calories by carrying more more muscle than fat. To do this, you should be taking part in strength-training / weight-lifting activities at least twice a week.
4. Drink caffeine!
The stimulant caffeine increases the amount of calories you burn while digesting your food. This isn't anything ground-breaking. People have been using caffeine to augment their weight loss for years. In fact, some older studies show that 250 milligrams of caffeine (that's a pretty hefty dose that I don't necessarily recommend to just anyone/everyone) consumed with a meal will increase the calories burned while digesting by 10 percent. Similarly, people are able to increase their calorie-burn by 10 percent while exercising if they have a cup of coffee or tea before their workouts. Other studies have shown that consuming green tea with meals can boost 24-hour energy expenditure by 4.6 percent.
5. Power moves!
The types of exercises that burn the most calories are also the exercises that use the most muscle groups. Complex pairings of upper and lower body moves – like in boot camps, kick-boxing and cutting edge personal training circuits – will burn more calories than isolated exercises. Squats, lunges and jumps are great examples of powerful movements that will give you more bang for the buck when compared to their isolation counterparts (i.e. Leg Extensions, Leg Curls, etc). Complex movements can condition the entire body and burn the greatest number of calories in the shortest amount of time.
That's it for today. I'll see you after the 4th when we will discuss 5 Secrets to Firing Up the Metabolism.
