5 Quick & Easy Cheats To Burn More Calories

Summer is now here, and we all want to secure a beautiful, well toned beach body, but in order to do this we need to perhaps lose a few more pounds. And to lose pounds we need to create a calorie deficit. This means we need to burn more calories than we consume – but we all know how difficult that can be!

We either need to eat less or exercise more. Ideally, we should do both.

But there is one other option…

We can cheat our way to burning more calories.

There are a few things we can do to almost trick our body into burning more calories without having to change anything drastic about our lifestyle. Below I share five quick and easy cheats to help you burn more calories.

Give them a go and share how they work for you by leaving a comment below.

1. There is an array of evidence to suggest that cinnamon helps to speed up fat loss when consumed at meal times. Four grams of cinnamon per meal (perhaps consumed in yoghurt) can reduce the glycaemic index (GI) of a meal up to 29%, studies suggest. This is important because the higher the GI value, the more a food causes blood sugar to jump and this jump leads to weight gain. There are a number of different types of cinnamon, and not all are equally effective. A study by Tim Ferris in his bestselling book (and fantastic read, may I add) The Four Hour Body suggests that Saigon cinnamon is the most effective when it comes to fat loss.

2. Another tip learnt from The Four Hour Body is that three tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice consumed prior to meal times lowers blood sugar peaks by approximately 10% which helps in your fight against weight gain.

3. Recent research in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that we possess two types of fat. White fat (bad fat) commonly associated with obesity and brown fat (good fat) that generates heat, helps to power up metabolic rate and burn away the bad white fat. There are ways we can activate this brown fat so it burns calories faster – and this is done most commonly with very cold temperatures. There are three ways this can be done and these are listed in order of effectiveness starting with the least effective as identified in The Four Hour Body.

a) Drink 500ml of ice cold water immediately after waking to kick-start thermogenesis.

b) Apply an ice pack to the back of the neck and upper trapezius (the places where brown fat is most common) for 30 minutes in the evening when insulin sensitivity is at its lowest. Use this cold pack to save refilling the ice tray daily.

c) This one is slightly painful. Submerge yourself in the bath filled with ice cold water and a few bags of ice for at least 20 minutes. This will really kick-start the fat burning process, but if you can’t handle this the ice pack to the neck and trapezius is fine.

4. Michael Zemel, PhD, identified that a diet rich in calcium helps the body to burn more calories. He found that the more calcium there is in a cell, the more fat that cell is able to burn. The calcium slightly increases the body’s core temperature leading to a boost in resting metabolism and increased fat burning.

Zemel proved these findings by splitting 32 obese people into three groups. All groups were put on a low calorie diet, however group one consumed a lot of dairy, group two consumed only a little dairy but took calcium supplements and group three had a low calcium, low dairy diet. After six months, the results revealed that the group consuming the dairy rich diet and obtaining their calcium from natural sources (group one) lost an extra five pounds and shed an extra inch and a quarter compared to the other two groups.

5. Spice up your meal times to help you burn calories faster for up to three hours later. Research suggests that spicy foods increase your resting metabolism by up to 50% for three hours after consumption. That means if your resting metabolism is 50 calories per hour, adding some cayenne pepper or some chillies to your meal will help you burn an extra 75 calories.

There are ways to cheat your body and burn more calories easily. These are just a few ways. Tim Ferris has written a whole book dedicated to quick cheats and tricks you can do to burn more calories and gain more muscle without having to make drastic changes to your lifestyle. He calls it The Four Hour Body and I strongly recommend you pick up a copy.

Further Reading:

5 Surprising Natural Fat Burners
Top 5 Herbs For Weight Loss
5 Ways To Burn An Extra 200 Calories
5 Powerful Natural Ways To Reduce Cellulite