Six Sure-Fire Ways to Burn More Calories in Less Time

If your goal is to burn fat, you know that you have to put in some work. But there are strategies and methods that can help you burn more calories in less time. They don’t require your to overhaul your diet, or even workout every day of the week. Keep reading and try to incorporate a few of these methods into your weekly routine – and see changes faster!

Incorporate HIIT 2-3 Times a Week

HIIT, or high intensity interval training, involves combining bursts of work done at max intensity/effort with short rest/recovery periods. It’s an efficient style of training that gets your heart rate up quickly and forces your body to recover for hours after your workout. It’s popular because it burns fat in less time when compared with other aerobic exercise.

HIIT works because it trains your body to work hard under stress – namely a lack of oxygen. Because HIIT pushes you to move at a very high intensity with very little time to rest, your muscles don’t completely recover between working sets. That molecular need for oxygen and lasts even after your workout is over as your body recovers. Your EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, increases for 48-72 hours. The result is a boot in caloric burn.

If that’s not enough, HIIT doesn’t sacrifice muscle the way that a long bout of steady state cardio training does. High intensity intervals trigger your anaerobic energy system for recovery. That means that instead of relying exclusively on oxygen to fuel your work intervals (because remember, you’re not getting enough oxygen during your workout to use it efficiently), your body turns to stored energy instead.

How to incorporate HIIT into your workout routine:

1. Keep it short. Because your goal is to work at a very high intensity, your HIIT sessions shouldn’t take long. In fact, if you feel like you can keep going at max intensity after 20 minutes, you’re not at max capacity.
2. High intensity and max capacity means high/max for you. If you’re new to working out our to HIIT keep in mind that max effort might not be a fast as lightening sprint. You do want to make sure you are working out at intensity that leaves your ability to have a leisurely conversation in the dust.
3. If you want to do HIIT and strength training on the same day, lift weights first.
4. If you’re a beginner, start with shorter work intervals and longer rest periods. As your get stronger and fitter, lengthen your work intervals and shorten your rest intervals.
5. Vary your intervals. Whether it’s your work:rest ratio or the equipment you use, variety is the spice of your fat burning life.
6. Download a free interval timer so that you’re not counting seconds or checking your watch every few seconds.

Try out some of these HIIT workouts!

15 Minute Cardio HIIT Burnout

Total Body HIIT in Under 30 Minutes

3 Sprint Workouts to Burn Fat Fast

Consume Protein at Every Meal

Are you a post-workout protein shake kind of girl? If you are, great. But don’t skimp on protein throughout the rest of your day either.

Researchers have found that people who incorporate protein into every meal saw the most weight loss and fat loss results. This is why.

When you spread protein consumption throughout the day you supply your muscles with a constant pool of amino acids to build lean muscle and boost your metabolism. If you only eat protein after your workout, or wait until dinnertime to consume the bulk of your protein for the day, your body goes all day long without that muscle building supply. To compensate, your body won’t use the protein you do consume efficiently.

But wait, there’s more.

Whether your goal is to lose weight or get stronger, run faster or get better at sports, if you’re working out you should be aiming to consume 1 gram of protein per pound of goal body weight. That’s a lot more than the Dietary Reference Intake suggests and a lot more than most women eat. In order to hit that protein goal, you will most likely need to start at breakfast and include protein in every eating opportunity through out the day.

Even if you don’t have a high protein macro goal, protein is an important component of a weight loss diet. Protein fills you up and keeps you feeling full in between meals. It takes longer to digest protein, and more energy, so including it at every eating opportunity means that not only are you less likely to want to snack between meals, but your metabolism remains in burn mode!

Ditch Machines for Dumbbells

Any type of resistance training can increase strength and improve overall body composition. But if you’re looking to burn more calories in less time, ditch the machines in favor of free weights.

Machines are a great option when you are just starting out. They offer stability and variety and can help you feel more comfortable in the gym. But that very stability that you might be using machines for is limiting the muscles you’re using, and therefore limiting the number of calories you burn while you lift.

Free weights (dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, etc), have a larger calorie-burn potential because you don’t get the built in stability. You have to recruit more muscles to stay balanced throughout the movement. The more muscles you use, the more calories you burn.

On top of that, free weights allow you a greater range of motion. Machines restrict you to one pattern of movement. And depending on the your body and the manipulability of the machine you’re using, that might not even be the right pattern of movement for your body. Free weights require you to learn good form but once you do, your potential is boundless.

Use Cardio Acceleration

Cardio acceleration is a highly efficient way to burn more calories in less time. Essentially, you combine hit with strength training by doing cardio intervals in between lifts instead of resting. For example you would do a set of pushups, and instead of scrolling through Insta you’d do 30-60 seconds of cardio. Multiply that out by how many sets and exercises you usually do during a workout, and that’s a lot of cardio!

There are a couple of factors that landed cardio acceleration on this list. First, if you include cardio acceleration in your strength training routine you don’t have to stay an extra 20-30 minutes to fit in your cardio after. Time saved. Second, because you are foregoing your rest periods for intense bursts of cardio your heart rate stays elevated – increasing the in-workout calorie burn and increasing EPOC.

Here’s what a full workout using cardio acceleration could look like:

Barbell Bench Press – 4 x 8 reps
45 seconds of High Knees

Incline Dumbbell Flyes – 3 x 12 reps
45 seconds Butt Kicks

Push Ups – 3 x 10 reps
45 seconds Skaters

Bench Dips – 3 x 12
30 seconds Mountain Climbers

Cable Tricep Pressdowns – 3 x 12
30 seconds Jumping Jacks

*It’s a good idea to combine an upper body strength exercise with a lower body cardio exercise so that your muscles have time to recover in between sets.

Reduce Chronic Stress

Stress eating/emotional eating is not a new concept. It’s not uncommon to use food as a coping mechanism to deal with unpleasant or stress-laden feelings. It’s not about hunger but about comfort. And though the comfort that food provides is only temporary, many of us rely on it to push through hard situations.

But did you know that cortisol, one of your body’s main “stress hormones”, triggers your body to store those extra calories (or any calories) as abdominal fat deposits?

Did you also know that chronic stress can actually slow fat metabolism, making it harder to lose weight even if you are eating in a caloric deficit?

Taking strides to reduce chronic stress will improve your health, your happiness and help you burn more calories without changing anything else!

Taking steps to reduce stress.

Life is full of surprises. Some of them are good, some of them not so good. And while a bit of stress is good for your body (i.e. the stress of a stimulating challenge, or the physical stress of a workout), too much stress wreaks havoc. Be preemptive in your quest to reduce stress.

• Exercise. Regular exercise makes you feel good about yourself and helps to improve quality of sleep (a big factor in exacerbating the vicious stress cycle). If you often feel stressed out, try going for a long walk or a low-impact hike. The movement will raise your heart rate and breathing rate, pumping much needed O2 to a tired body. Plus, exercises triggers your body to release feel good endorphins – great for counteracting stress hormones.
  
• Build better sleeping habits. In this go-go-go world of hours we tend to think that “sleep when you die” is the best way to get ahead in life. The reality is that your body needs 7-9 hours of sleep every single night to recover and function at it’s best. If you really want to get ahead, and your really want to reduce chronic stress, make quality sleep a priority.
  
• Take time off. Even a single day is enough to reset your body and mindset. If you’ve got time off to burn, take a day or two! Don’t wait until you have to use it. Take a mental health day to focus on you.
  
• If you don’t have a full day off to burn, take advantage of small pockets of time when you can. 5 minutes here. 10 minutes there. If you can steal moments to focus and prioritize your health and happiness it adds up to consequential change.

For more information: What to do if You Can’t Stop Stress Eating

Move More Than You Sit

There are some stats out there that give us a seriously scary view of how sedentary American adults have become, and what kind of trouble that’s causing.

25% of Americans spend more than 8 hours a day sitting.

Sedentary lifestyles increase mortality rate by 71%.

Women are more likely to be physically inactive than men.

6% of deaths worldwide are linked to inactivity.

I don’t drop these stats for no reason. If they make you uncomfortable good, they’re meant to.

Your body is meant to move. It’s meant to walk, to get up and sit down, to take the stairs and stay in motion. And all of that movement? It adds up to work done and calories burned.

The Truth About Weight Loss and Metabolism (it’s not what you think)

Challenge yourself to move more than you sit.

• Set an alarm for every 2 hours. When it goes off get up from your desk and take a 5 minute movement break. I promise – that email can wait 5 minutes.
  
• Park further away, or leave your car at home.
  
• Track your steps for a couple of days. Figure out what your average is and then add 250 steps to that average. Aim to hit your new goal for a week before adding another 250.
  
• Take a walk before work or after dinner. Schedule movement into a part of your day that doesn’t usually contain movement.

It doesn’t take a massive overhaul to your diet or 6 workouts a week to transform the way you feel and look. Instead focus on making small, consistent changes. The results that you see when you stay consistent will renew your motivation and help you stay dedicated to the goal!