As ever be aware that you are going to have to put in effort to lose weight, these metabolism boosting tips will help you lose weight but the odds of losing weight from simply sitting around are about as good as winning the lottery – one in a few million.

How to boost your metabolism

1. Eat the right foods.  This is a huge article (or even book) all to itself, but suffice to say there are a number of foods that boost the metabolism significantly.  Look especially to those foods that are rich in vitamin c and iron (such as spinach) or fat soluble rich fiber (like oatmeal), and of course spicy foods.  But don’t let that think you can ladle on the cream and calorie packed other foods just because you are eating them!

2. Weight lift.  One of the most powerful ways of boosting the metabolism, lifting weights can actually have you burning calories for hours after you have finished exercising.

3. Cardio.  Not quite as powerful as weight lifting (obviously it hasn’t developed the muscles!) but still very useful as a way to boost your body’s metabolism and so help strip the fat even when you are sitting down resting after your run/walk/cycle.

4. Eat!  It may sound out but to raise the metabolism you need to eat.  Eating less than 1,000 calories a day will slow the metabolism down considerably.  It is also needed to build muscle, and the more muscle you have the higher your metabolism.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, losing weight is not as difficult as some make out.  Yes it does involve work and some sacrifice, but in reality weight loss can be as easy as walking.  In fact weight loss can be achieved BY walking.

Walking for Weight Loss

Whilst the idea of strapping on some running shoes and pounding out a marathon might leave you sweating from fear rather than exertion, the idea of walking for 20 minutes shouldn’t.  And for many people that is how little effort it can take for you to lose weight.

Such a small effort as walking for 20 minutes every day can start to burn calories, calories that you were storing as fat you instead now burn as energy.  Almost as importantly your metabolism increases, giving you an even bigger calorie burning boost that will last well beyond the length of time that you were walking for.

Because such a small effort is required walking for weight loss is perfect for beginners to losing weight, people who might have struggled to make weight loss gains in other more active sports.  Unlike many other activities to burn calories walking is also low impact, it puts far less pressure on your bones and joints than running, cycling and the like.

It is not just beginners that can look at walking as a useful weight loss tool though, by properly adapting a regime weight loss can be achieved at all sorts of levels for all sorts of people.  Extending the walking distance, walking up hills and more can be done to make this weight loss trick something viable for everyone.

One of the worst pieces of advice that tends to get given is to try limit your protein intake.  This is wrong, pure and simple.  Not only is protein good for you but it can actually aid the weight loss.

Protein and Weight Loss

The problem many people giving weight loss advice have with protein is two fold

1)      it can increase muscle

2)      it is often associated with fatty foods

To address the second point first – yes protein is found in a lot of fatty foods.  But it is also found in a lot of healthy, lean foods.  Foods such as chicken breasts, turkey, mushrooms and more.  Protein is not unhealthy in itself and plenty of very healthy foods are packed with it.

Yes muscle can increase muscle, which if you are just trying to lose weight (rather than tone up at all) can be a slight hindrance, but also a blessing.  Muscle burns more calories than fat, even when you aren’t doing anything.  It also burns more calories than not having the mass (naturally), so having some muscle will burn more calories.

Don’t think this means you’ll end up looking  like a body builder.  It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to build that much muscle.  Cardio exercise and low weight, high repetition weight lifting will strip fat whilst developing lean muscle that will have you looking trim and toned rather than muscular.

This may surprise you by fat loss studies have shown that eating breakfast will actually help you to lose weight!  Obviously we are not talking about a calorie and fat laden fry up here, but a healthy cereal or some yoghurt and fruit can set you up for the day, help stop you from feeling hungry. 

Why does this work? 

How a Breakfast Helps You Lose Weight 

1. When you sleep your body’s metabolism also sleeps.  Your calorie burning slows down.  To bump start it you need to eat, otherwise your body will be in permanent ‘starvation mode’ and you will be using less calories to do simple things.  This can add up to make a big difference.

2. By eating when you get up and before you are hungry you are less likely to eat a lot at lunch time – as your body will already have been provided with some of the fuel that it needs.  By having breakfast you stop yourself from needing to ‘pig out’ at lunch, which is often the hardest meal to do healthy – with eating out when in the office etc.

3. You stop yourself snacking.  Having an instant hit of energy that continues throughout the day you are far less likely to snack than if you skip and start feeling peckish.  Considering how unhealthy many snacks are that is an important difference.

4. A good size breakfast stops you thinking from about food.  You eat more when you think about food – that is why dieting can be so hard, it is always on your mind.  If you eat breakfast it is far less likely to be playing on your mind throughout the day.

I know you might be a little scared about it, but let me tell you, it’s not as bad as it seems. Seriously.

In this short article I will talk to you about how Intermittent fasting will help you to drop fat easily and quickly. You might have heard about this particular form of fasting, but let’s start with talking about what it is.

So, What Is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting usually means that you don’t eat anything for a portion of your day and only drink water and then you eat normally for the rest of the day. For instance 20/4 is a type of shorthand used in this type of fasting that means that you’re going to be fasting for 20 hours and then you’re going to have a period of non fasting. Makes sense?

How Is This Helpful To You?

Well, it does a few great things for your health. Let me list them here:

1. It strengthens your self control – when you decide you’re not going to eat and stick to it, you’re definitely going to come out of it stronger and you’re going to believe you can do almost anything. It’s really great.

2. Your body gets used to the regime – this is pretty self explanatory. When you eat regularly during similar time periods, you’re going to tell your body “this is when we eat, and this is when we don’t eat”. Before you know it, you’re only going to get hungry during the “eating periods”

3. You’ll live longer – studies show that if you fast regularly, you’ll actually live longer.

These are just some of the reasons for you to try out intermittent fasting. It’s really a great way to drop fat easily and it’s very beneficial as I listed above. You have to remember that you can in fact drink water as you fast. As you probably know, water will not make you fatr, so there is no problem drinking it.

So, How Do You Get Started?

Fasting can be dangerous for some people so you should start slow and take it easy at first. You don’t want to faint while going to work, do you? Just fast for 12 hours and see how you take it. If everything is ok, you can prolong the period of fasting to 18 and then 20 hours. If you feel good about everything after fasting for 20 hours, then you should be fine. Also if you have any doubts, it might be good to see the doctor before you start. Also, make sure that you remember to not fast too often. This might cause some serious health problems.

Intermittent fasting is great for losing weight. It really is perfect if you need some quick results. I hope I got you a little more excited about your weight loss adventure.

Sometimes the motivation to lose weight will be strong, and we won’t even be tempted by that tub of ice cream sitting in the freezer. Running out in the cold and rain will seem worth it. But then other times we wonder why we even care, we feel the call of chocolate or the sofa and it can be hard to resist.

Goal Setting and Weight Loss

With so much contradictory motivations causing us to act in certain ways how then do we keep ourselves focussed on trying to lose weight?

First of all let us say that you will slip up from any plan you put in place, it is human nature. Accept that it will happen and don’t give up on your weight loss plan when it does. Just get yourself back on track and accept that the slip up was part of the ‘journey’.

More important is goal setting. Goal setting falls into two different types.

1. Short term goals
2. Medium to long term goals

and both types are important to losing weight.

The long term goal is usually what makes us decide that we want to lose weight. The idea of losing 10lbs, 20lbs, 80lbs – whatever you may want, is what will trigger us to start in the first place… and so it is an important motivating factor.

From time to time, when you lose sight of why you are trying to lose weight, it is important to remember that long term goal. Remember what you wanted to look like, remember why you are doing this. Use it to keep yourself on track, to see the ‘bigger picture’, and remember it is the picture that is bigger – not you!

We are often motivated by the here and now though, which is why short term, achievable goals are so important in weight loss. A short term goal will help keep you from straying right now. Want to lose 2 or 3lbs this week? You know you won’t do it by reaching for the ice cream. So a short term goal is more likely to effect your decision making in the ‘here and now’.

What the goals are depends on you, what you are trying to achieve and how well you know your own mind and body. But 99% of the time goal setting is a powerful tool to help you stick to a weight loss regime, so don’t skip it out and decide on the general ‘I just want to lose weight’ idea instead – that won’t get you anywhere.

Not liking what you weight, how you look is enough of a spur to trigger the initial thought process, to lead you to starting a weight loss journey.  But for many people who want to lose weight that initial trigger will only provide them with the momentum to try lose weight for a week or two. 

This is no surprise, weight loss is hard, it takes sacrifice – you can’t simply do what you want and lose weight.  In fact it was probably doing so that gained you the weight in the first place!  What you need to do is find triggers and motivation to get you passed the first couple of weeks. 

Motivational Triggers 

1. An old favourite, but one that works, is the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photo’s – or in this case just the before one.  Take a photo of yourself (possibly naked if you have a partner you can disrobe in front of) and pin it to the fridge or anywhere you think appropriate.  If you dislike your figure at the moment it will remind you just why you are putting the effort to lose weight in.

2. Join a club.  Weight watchers, for example, works for a reason – because being with others going through the same thing motivates us.  By going to a club you become responsible to others for your weight loss, you have to tell them why you failed to lose weight, if you do.

3. Work with a partner.  For much the same reason that joining a club works working with a partner does to, only it is more intimate and friendly (a partner could be a friend or family member).  You will often get competitive and try ‘beat’ what the other is losing.

4. Spend money.  Not for everyone this, but if you are spending money on trying to lose weight – on gym membership, clubs, membership sites etc, you will be more inclined to make that money worthwhile, to show it was well spent.

5. Set goals.  By setting numerous, small goals, you get in the habit of trying to ‘out do yoursef’, to beat the goals and deadlines you put in place.  Losing 4 stone is not an achievable goal quickly, and could put you off.  Losing 3lbs in a week though is a target you  might reasonably set yourself (depending on your weight) – and then you can set another for the next week.

But such diets are actually dangerous, and often won’t lose you weight.  They take a single piece of information and base an entire diet around it.  But the body doesn’t work in isolation, it needs a lot of things to keep it going… which is why you should focus more on changing your eating habits to be more healthy and less on the fad diets.

Why Fad Diets Are Dangerous

Any diet that has you cutting our certain food types, or only eating set foods, should be given careful consideration.  Because the body doesn’t work in isolation what you put into it will react together – and is often needed.

As an example consider calcium. We know calcium is important for things like bone density – those who are likely to suffer from problems with weak bones are advised to take more calcium from sources such as milk – but the amount of calcium we absorb is actually decided by our magnesium levels, so simply getting more calcium without increasing magnesium won’t have much effect.

It is this sort of balance within the body that many fad diets don’t consider.  Because they simply look at ‘your body needs x so give it x, they don’t see the bigger picture.  And of course that is for those diets that consider anything other than how few calories you can eat – and those diets are very dangerous, they can even compromise your immune system.

So, What Is LISS?

LISS is a very popular form of excercising. It’s low intensity workouts that usually take a longer ammount of time. Those guys you always see walking on a treadmill or riding a gym bike and talking to their friends are using LISS to work out. Why?…because it works.

You may believe it or not, but LISS actually works like gangbusters. I mean, it’s probably one of the oldest ways to work out. It burns a lot of calories although as I mentioned before it does require some time each day.

I mean, it’s not uncommon for a person using LISS to shed fat to do somthing simillar to this:
1. 20 minutes of brisk walking to the gym
2. A low intensive weightlifting workout at the gym for 30 minutes
3. And finally, 20 minutes of walking back home.

That person just spent an hour working out. They could accomplish results with just 20 minutes of HIIT, but you have to remember that your body does need the variety of different workout methods and some people just aren’t on friendly terms with HIIT. That’s why you do need to use LISS.

I use low intensity cardio for fatloss and it works great. I walk for 45 minutes to an hour at around a 3.5 mile per hour pace. I am only saying this to make sure that you don’t underestimate it because you’ve seen it so much. It’s popular for a reason.

Before we part I do want to share another great tip with you. If you really want to get the best results out of your LISS workout, try doing it early in the morning before you even eat anything.

This is precisely how your body is going to burn the most calories because you didn’t have anything to eat since the evening before.

Another thing that you should definitely remember is that your workout sessions should not be longer than 50 minutes. If you work out for longer than that, you’re going to be running a risk of burning your muscle tissue to supply energy and that’s of course never good.

Just to sum up, LISS is good. You should do it. Go ahead and mix it up with HIIT if you want to, but do get some good cardio in. It will do you good.

As the name itself suggests, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a very tough, extremely intensive, but also relatively short work out. HIIT excercises don’t usually last longer than 15 to 25 minutes total, so this particular type of workout is perfect if you’re short on time.

The way HIIT workout is structured is you start with 3-5 minutes of low intensity to warm up. The next portion is divided into alternating 10-30 second segments of very intensive all out pace and around 60 seconds of a low intensity recovery period. So, just to give you an example, if you’re doing HIIT on a bike, you’re going to ride as fast as you can for 10-30 seconds (if you can go longer than that, you’re not going all out) and then you’re going to go slower for another minute or so. Then, when that second minute is over, you go back to going all out again. You will repeat this 5-8 times and then do a slow cooldown fo 3-5 minutes.

As you can probably imagine, this type of weightloss workout is extremely effective as it burns a lot of those unwanted calories. The best thing about it is that it works very effectively even after you work out as your metabolic rate remains raised for a long time after you’re finished excercising.

On the other hand, it’s important for you to know and realize that your body adapts to everything so you really should have variety if you’re really thinking about being successfull. I mean, what I am trying to say is that if you do something, no matter what it is for an extended period of time, the results you’ll get are going to decrease. That’s obvious perhaps, but I wanted to make sure that you understand it well.

For that reason you should make sure that you don’t stick only to HIIT, but you do regular cardio as well whenever you have enough time to do it (I am sure that you remember that cardio workouts can be quite long. They can last as long as 45 minutes which you may not always have.)

The one last thing I wanted to say about HIIT and fat loss is that it’s not good for everyone. As you probably noticed, it requires some highly intensive workout and if your body is not used to it, maybe you should spend some time preparing it for it before you dive headfirst into HIIT. I am sure you don’t want to overdo it and have to take breaks from excercising all together, right?

Both regular cardio and HIIT are great. The one thing you have to know about is that whether you decide to do HIIT or cardio, you really shouldn’t go overboard with it. Just listen to what your body tells you and give it variety it needs.