New tricks to burn body fat fast
What are body fats?
The more technical term for body fat is adipose tissue, with individual cells being called adipocytes (adipo = fat ; cyte = cell). In humans, the primary type of fat cell is called white adipose tissue, or WAT, so named because of its color (it’s actually sort of a milky yellow). While there is another type of fat, called brown adipose tissue or BAT (which is actually reddish/orangeish), it’s generally been thought that humans didn’t have much BAT and hence it could be ignored. As I’ll discuss later, this has been brought into question by recent research. I’ll come back to BAT in the next chapter.
In humans, there may be anywhere from XXX to YYY billion fat cells, which range in diameter from 70 to 120 µm (micro-meters, that’s one millionth of a meter). WAT in humans is composed primarily (anywhere from 80 to 95%) of lipid. By lipid, I mean stored triglycerides (TG) which is simply a glycerol molecule bound to three free fatty acid (FFA) chains.
The remaining part of the fat cell is comprised of a little bit of water as well as all of the cellular machinery needed to produce the various enzymes, proteins, and products that fat cells need to do their duty. As it’s turning out, fat cells produce quite a bit of stuff, some good, some bad, that affects your overall metabolism.
For the record, one pound of fat is 454 grams and let’s assume 90% lipid on average. So about 400 or so grams is actual stored TG. When burned by the body, one gram of fat provides 9 calories so 400 grams of fat contains about 3600 calories of stored energy. Now you know where the old axiom of ~3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat comes from.
What’s it for?
Other than being considered unattractive in modern society, you may be wondering what role fat cells play in the body. The main role is as an energy storage dump. In fact, up until about 1994, the predominant view of fat cells was that this is all they were: a passive place for the body to store energy for times when there wasn’t enough food available. This turns out to be drastically incorrect but, before we go on, let’s look at that one aspect of fat cells.
In terms of energy storage, fat cells are truly exceptional in their capacity to do so. As mentioned above, a single pound of fat contains roughly 3,500 calories of stored energy. Assuming you could burn 100% fat as fuel (you can’t for reasons that aren’t important now), this is enough energy for a 150-pound person to walk roughly 35 miles or so before using that energy. That’s ONE pound of fat. Even at an extremely low 5 lbs of body fat, which is near the very low-end, you’re looking at ~15,000 calories of stored energy. That’s 150 miles of straight walking or so.
Here are some more numbers to give you a little better perspective. The average American male who may weigh 160 lbs with 15% body fat has 24 pounds of body fat which is about 84,000 calories of stored energy or so. He’ll have a metabolic rate close to 2,400 calories/day. Even with complete starvation, that’d get him through nearly 35 days without any food, assuming he was using 100% fat.
Here are some cool tips to burn fast
1.Try Listen to fast music
If you seem to have trouble pumping yourself up for a workout, try popping in those ear buds! In a small study by the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, scientists found that when male college students pedaled stationary bicycles while listening to fast popular music, the subjects pedaled faster and elevated their heart rates more. The students even perceived their workouts to be less intense than they actually were. And when the music slowed down? The opposite happened. So listen to music you love and get your cardio on
2. Speed up
The simplest advice of all for upping your calorie burn is to Increase your pace even if it's just a little bit. The tortoise may have won the race, but the hare burned more calories!
3. Don’t work too hard
This might sound counter-intuitive but hear me out. We all know how important intensity is to any workout plan, but also think about how your workout affects the rest of your day. If you spend an hour at the gym sprinting and doing lunges, you might burn 600 calories in a short amount of time, but if that intense workout completely wipes you out for the rest of the day, the extra calorie burn might not be worth it. Be honest with yourself and definitely push yourself, but not so hard that it gets in the way of other daily activities. After all, the goal is to improve your quality of life.
4. Add some intervals
By varying your intensity through different intervals (think one minute running then two minutes walking), you can actually improve your fitness more quickly than by steady state cardio, and you can burn more calories. The bonus? Time seems to fly when you add interval training!
5. Use your whole body
Most cardio exercises focus on the lower body (biking, walking, elliptical, stair climbing, etc.), but if you want to burn more calories, one easy tip is to incorporate your upper body. Pump those arms hard and high when running and walking, make sure to grab the elliptical with moving handles, and even consider adding a more full-body exercise to your cardio mix such as the rowing machine. The more muscles you move, the more calories you will burn!
6. Do cardio first
Over the years, many clients have asked me, "Should I do weights or cardio first?" If you want to up your calorie burn (and who doesn't?), research shows that you should do cardio first. Published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, one study examined how many calories exercisers burned doing one of four workout combinations: running only, strength training only, running followed by strength training, and strength training followed by running. Researchers found that while all exercisers experienced a strong "after burn" (a higher rate of calories burned when at rest after exercise) for the two hours after working out, the strength training and run/strength training groups had the highest exercise after burn of all. So what does this mean? Although it's just one study, the takeaway is that we might burn more calories after working out if we do our cardio first.
7. Try plyometric
If you consider yourself an intermediate or advanced exerciser and are looking for ways to burn more calories, plyometrics are the way to go. These high-intensity, explosive exercises such as jumping and hopping, get your heart rate up quickly, which equals a higher rate of calories burned. Additionally, these athletic movements really target your fast-twitch muscles, coordination and agility, so you're training your body in an entirely new and challenging way. And challenging workouts almost always equal results—and more calories burned. Because using proper form is essential when doing these advanced high-impact moves, consider learning the ropes first!
8. Focus
We talk a lot about the importance of the mind-body connection and fitness. Although cardio isn't as Zen-like as yoga, cardio can still benefit from a strong sense of awareness. The next time you do cardio, focus on the movements and breathing while squeezing those muscles. By engaging your mind, you can actually better engage your muscles, which allows you to complete the exercise more easily and still burn more calories!
