Been busy lately and can’t keep up with your schedule at the gym? Stuck with your computer all day and those hours left during the day is reserved for your travel time, shower and rest when you get home? We have compiled stealth ways to turn up your calorie burn all day long. Lose more weight in less time with these expert tips.
Rise, sweat and shine
If you know you have limited time to get to the gym in the morning, set your alarm to go off 15 minutes early. It is best to do something first thing to get your metabolism stoked like jumping jacks, push-ups, crunches and squats that can torch more than 140 calorie in the burning process. These will further continue all day.
Try the “1 times 10” trick
“I try to find 10 opportunities during the day to raise my heart rate for one minute at a time,” says Tony Horton, creator of the new P90 DVD. It will add oxygen to keep you alert, activate your heart, lungs, legs and brain plus the benefit of burning as many as 300 to 400 calories a day. Look on getting 10 squats at the top of every hour or walking lunges on your way to and from the bathroom. May look silly when you were caught by your coworker but hey, your goal here is get healthy, so move it.
Keep it cool
Pump your AC a little earlier than usual to melt fat. Keeping your home on the chilly side can increase your body’s brown fat by up to 40 percent, per a study in the journal Diabetes. When activated by cold temperatures, brown fat burns calories to help your body stay warm, even when you’re just sitting around.
Encourage yourself with your smartphone
Due to the demand of work, you tend to sit all day. Help yourself by setting your smartphone alarm to go off every 30 minutes as a reminder to get up. Before you know it, hours can go by without leaving your desk. Activity Trackers don’t help if you’re not actually moving. So try this trick today.
Replace your big bottle to small ones
Swap your extra-large water bottle for one half its size. This way, you’ll be forced to refill, meaning you’re moving more often than before.
Give it another five more minutes
Whether you’re walking, running, trekking along on the treadmill or stepping away on the stair climber, convince yourself for another five more minutes which can burn up to 100 extra calories.
Hit the floor
We love the couch, who doesn’t? Work harder (by moving more muscles) when you stand up, so choose to stay on the floor when you watch TV and you’ll incinerate more calories than if you were lounging on the couch.
Lift a little more
Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston found that people who did 20 minutes of strength training on top of their cardio shed more than those who chose cardio alone. Before you double your treadmill time, hop off and grab weights.
Spotify it
Researchers at Brunel University London who used Spotify discovered that hip hop music with 120 to 140 beats per minute got the best tempo for running- this can mess with your rhythm and make you push more often while enjoying your run. So arrange and download these type of music in your playlist for the optimal way and you’ll unknowingly work harder. “There’s a beat every time your foot strikes the ground, so without realizing it, you’ll pick up the pace and try to match the beat,” says Kira Stokes, an instructor at BFX Studio in New York City.
Don’t forget your legs
you know you’d like to tone your arms, but you melt a lot more calories churning out squats than bicep curls. Your legs are the muscle group that uses the most energy, so better combine a leg exercise with an upper-body move. One great move to try: trainer Gunnar Peterson’s Dumbbell Curtsy Squat to Lateral Raise. It’ll really fire up those legs.
Combine it with jump
Make it intense. Instead of resting between sets, jump-rope to keep your heart rate up. You’ll turn a regular weight-training day into a high-intensity routine. Jumping rope intensely burns about 13 calories per minute. During a 30-minute circuit, you could say buh-bye to more than 195 additional calories!
Go the extra mile
Challenge yourself by doing slow, fast-paced intervals with longer steps before heading home. Andrew Kastor, coaching director for the Asics LA Marathon and head coach for the Asics Mammoth Track Club in Mammoth, Calif., suggests doing six to eight of them with one-minute rests in between each. You’re adding a mile to your usual run without knowing it.
