The fat-fighting tips no body can resist (From Echo)

The fat-fighting tips no body can resist

8:00pm Monday 29th June 2009 in

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Summer is here, and thoughts are bound to be turning to weight loss ahead of the holidays. Here are four tips to help you achieve lasting results.

1. BUILD MUSCLE WITH RESISTANCE TRAINING Building muscle through resistance training (including bodyweight, dumbbell/barball and core training) will significantly increase your metabolism (the rate at which we burn calories to maintain life).

A 5-10lbs gain of lean muscle will increase resting metabolism by roughly 100 calories a day. So, since muscles burn calories and unwanted fat, you should work on building as much of a “fat burning machine” as possible.

2. ALTERNATING INTENSITY TRAINING Perform interval intensity training instead of steady fat burning zone cardio.

Fluctuating between bouts of high-intensity activity with adequate recovery periods (eg. sprinting/walking/sprinting/walking) will not only eat up body fat, it keeps you more interested in the workout.

Intensity interval work will burn a lot of calories, but more importantly, it will keep your body revved up all day long.

3. FOOD To keep your metabolism up, and become a more efficient 24-hour fat-burning machine, you must feed your body whole, unprocessed, organic, living food frequently throughout the day, every two to four hours.

This helps accelerate your metabolism so you burn 100-200 more calories per day. Also, when you eat this way, you help your body to support healthy fat loss and muscle gain. It’s important to remember muscle is your body’s metabolic furnace. Muscle needs energy, even while you’re sleeping.

4. MOVEMENT We are becoming more and more inactive thanks to desk jobs, must-see TV shows and games consoles. Most of us move less at ages 30, 40 and beyond than when we were in our teens and twenties.

So start moving! Take the stairs instead of escalators, ride your bike or walk the dog.

These may seem trivial things, but they will all count, and by building up an extra five hours of activity each week, you can increase your calorie usage by 300 to 600 per week.

There is no quick fix, special pill, diet or gadget to help. Just these four principles to apply to your life if you want lasting fat loss – and want to look and feel your best.