Do you need to burn more calories to reach your weight loss goals? It’s easy to do and can make a big dent in your daily caloric deficit and ultimately your waistline if you do them consistently. Follow these tips for some ideas on how to increase your chances of burning calories:
- Take 10 minutes before you start your day and do a small amount of cardio. It doesn’t really matter what it is, walk or jog in place, go up and down stairs or turn on the radio and dance. It will give your metabolism a boost and you will burn more calories for the rest of the day. As a bonus, it will also help you go to work in a better mood!
- Instead of walking or jogging on the treadmill at the same pace and at the same incline, switch up your routine and add intervals. Walk for 4 minutes at 3.5 mph, then increase speed to 5 mph for 2 minutes. Continue this pattern for 15 minutes and then make your starting point 4 mph and build to 5.3 mph or a pace that pushes you further than you’re used to. You will burn more calories and give your body a new challenge. Simply increasing your walk from 3 mph to 4 mph will burn almost 100 additional calories in 60 minutes.
- Find a friend to exercise with who is faster and fitter than you. This will keep you motivated to keep moving and push yourself harder than usual. Most people will just stop or slow down when the going gets tough, but a supportive friend will keep you going.
- If you work at a desk, get up as much as possible and walk around your office or cubicle or just walk in place. Bring a pair of small dumbbells to leave at work and hold them while you move your arms. This will burn some extra calories and they will add up if you do it consistently.
- Increase your time by 5 minutes. If you normally exercise for 30 minutes, this week try to exercise for 35 minutes. You could burn approximately 50 additional calories if you normally burn 300 calories in 30 minutes. It will be like you never had that Oreo cookie after lunch!
All of these tips will help you see faster results, but only if done consistently over a period of time. Most of them are easy to incorporate into what you’re already doing anyway, so why not give it a try? Your body will adapt to what you’re doing if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, causing you to come to a standstill. You need to do something different if you want to continue to see results. Do it this week!
Have a healthy week!
