Top 10 Fat Loss & Calorie Burning Tips: Star News World .com

The most important step in losing that stubborn body fat is to burn more calories than you consume. This is also know as a negative calorie intake. To lose fat, you need to have a diet that has a calorie intake that is less than your total calories burned.

Expending calories is easy! Your body is always burning calories, even while you sleep. Of course, to speed-up the calorie burning process you need to integrate exercise into your lifestyle.

Remember this formula:
Daily calorie intake – Energy expended in calories = Calorie deficit / fat loss

Approximately, 3500 calories equates to about 1 pound of fat. You should aim to lose no more than 2/3 pounds of fat every week until you have reached your desire weight.

Your BMR, or basal metabolic rate (metabolism), is The rate at which energy is used by a person at complete rest. This continuous calorie burning includes normal bodily functions such as the beating of our heart, respiration, and the maintenance of body temperature. Your BMR is influenced by a number of factors, including age, weight, height, gender, environmental temperature, dieting, and exercise frequency.

Shoot for a calorie deficit of around 500 a day. This means that you must burn 500 more calories than you consume within a day.

For example, lets say that, for the day, your food intake totals 2,500 calories. Now, let's say your Basel Metabolic Rate is 2,000 calories a day.
You would need to burn 1,000 calories to have a daily deficit of 500 calories. This 500 calorie deficit means that you are burning 3,500 more calories than you are consuming every 7 days. At this rate, you would then be losing about 1 pound of body fat every week!
Remember: Approximately, 3500 calories equates to about 1 pound of fat

Remember to make sure that while consuming less calories than you expend, you also make sure that the calories consumed are from a well balanced, nutritious diet!

Physically exerting yourself, too much / too fast, can lead
to you tiring out very quickly and therefore, you will not be burning as many calories as required for you to most effectively lose body fat. In order to burn calories effectively, you must pace yourself so that you do not tire-out too quickly. You need to keep yourself moving long enough for your body to begin using your stored fat as fuel!

Many fitness experts agree that a cardiovascular or aerobic exercise routine should be at least 20 minutes in length to begin effectively burning calories therefore, losing fat. During that time you will need to stay within your Target Heart Rate Zone to most effectively burn those calories.

The chart below outlines the target heart rate zones for the average person based on age:

Target Heart Beats Per Minute Chart
heart beats per minute (BPM) - based on age

= target heart rate for maximum fat burn!
Chart courtesy of: http://www.erlanger.org/metabolic/?page=exercise

As you can see from the chart above, a 20 year old should strive to keep his or her heart rate
between 128 and 165 beats per minute (BPM). To be most effective, the heart rate should
be kept as close to the middle number as possible.
(example, 20 yr old BPM = 145 for best fat-burn results)

Methods for monitoring your heart rate:
1. First of all, we strongly recommend using a cardio-training machine that has a built-in
heart rate monitor. You can find these machines at most of the good gyms. They can
include stair steppers, stationary bicycles, ski simulators, rowing machines and others. There are
also some excellent home machines on the market that may have built in heart rate monitors.

These machines usually have adjustable intensity levels so you can adjust the resistance of the given exercise. We recommend starting-off your routine with a 2 minute warm up while
keeping the resistance at the minimum level.
At that point, as you are gripping the heart rate monitor handles, keep an eye on your heart rate read-out.
If your heart rate is below the minimum, for your age, as shown on the above chart, you need to increase the intensity level a notch or two. If your heart rate starts to drift above your maximum (max) heart rate, you should then decrease the intensity level until your heart BPM falls within your specified range for the most efficient fat-burning session.!

2. Secondly, you can also use a strap-on heart rate monitor.

Some of these, such as the monitors pictured above, look similar to a watch.
These will come-in particularly useful when you do not have access to a cardio machine with built-in heart rate monitors.
Use the strap-on monitors when you are doing free-form cardiovascular routines
such as jogging, jumping rope, aerobics, boxing, etc.
Simply apply the same guidelines, as outlined in the target heart rate chart, to keep yourself within your target heart rate zone for maximum calorie / fat burn.

3. The third method is the self-monitor method. While watching a clock with a second counter, take your pulse by placing your index and middle fingers in an area in which you can easily feel your heart beat. The most common areas are the wrist and neck:

While watching the clock, count how many times your heart beats in a 15 second period.
Then simply multiply the beats by 4 to give you your heart beats per minute (BPM) rate*.
( *example: 32 heart beats per 15 seconds = 128 BPM)

Top 10 Fat Loss Tips: #3
Eat smaller, frequent meals for fat loss
And do not starve yourself or skip meals

Several food consumption studies, in both animals and humans, have proven this to be correct.
Animals and humans who were fed 1 - 3 large meals, instead of more frequent small meals throughout the day, had more body fat than the group that consumed the smaller meals.

When you skip meals, your body goes into fat storage mode and your metabolism slows down. Therefore, eating smaller, healthy, frequent meals every 3 - 4 hours throughout the day will keep your fat burning furnace fired-up!

Some diets are training your body to to store fat. The worst thing for weight loss program is to starve your body of food. This will result in weight loss in short term, but it also means your Basal Metabolic Rate will also be lowered. That means that the rate at which you store fat is also increased. Therefore, it will become very difficult to sustain the weight loss and in most cases, people who try to loose weight through limiting of their food intake, will eventually end up putting the fat back on as soon as they get back to eating thier normal diet!

Drinking enough water everyday is essential to losing body fat most efficiently!

If you don't drink enough, your body tries to hold onto the water that it already has. This can cause bloating and constipation. When you drink plenty of water, your body is more easily able to flush out toxins from the body and more effectively burn fat.
Without water, your kidneys can not do their job properly and your liver must pitch in to help. While the liver helping the kidneys, it can't burn as much fat, so some of the fat that would normally be used as fuel gets stored in your body instead. Drinking more water will allow the liver get back to its regular job of turning fat into fuel.

Here are a few things that drinking lots of water can help with
Lowers your calorie intake - Water will work well as an appetite suppressant because it fills-you-up with zero calories. When you drink lots of water, you are less likely to crave food because you will feel full which will help tremendously when trying to cut-down on your daily calories that you consume.

Transports nutrients - The carbohydrates and proteins that our bodies use as food are metabolized and transported by water in the bloodstream. This will allow easier delivery of necessary vitamins and minerals throughout your body..

Oxygenates you - Water is important for proper circulation within the body. Water contains oxygen and therefore, when well hydrated, you body will get more oxygen delivered to it's cells. The body will burn more fat when it has plenty of oxygen readily available. The increase in oxygen levels will also give you more energy so you can charge through your workday and your workouts!

Sugar has no nutritional benefit to humans. It is full of empty calories and can add hundreds or even thousands of unnecessary calories to your daily food and drink intake. Be aware that sugar is

added to foods in many forms. One of the most commonly added forms of sugar that is added to thousands of foods and drinks is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

Almost all nutritionists finger high fructose corn syrup consumption as a major culprit in the nation's obesity crisis. The inexpensive sweetener flooded the American food supply in the early 1980s, just about the time the nation's obesity rate started its drastic increase.

the problem with HFCS is not only that it is sweeter than other forms of sugar, but also that it does not affect appetite. Fructose adds to overeating because it does not trigger chemical messengers that tell the brain the stomach is full and no longer hungry.

Another reason to avoid sugar is because it is a toxin to the human body.
Many doctors have claimed sugar for being a POISON!
The following paragraph is an excerpt from nexusmagazine.com: "Refined Sugar: The Sweetest Poison Of All" → "Refined sugar is lethal when ingested by humans because it provides only that which nutritionists describe as "empty" or "naked" calories. It lacks the natural minerals which are present in the sugar beet or cane. In addition, sugar is worse than nothing because it drains and leaches the body of preci

ous vitamins and minerals through the demand its digestion, detoxification and elimination make upon one's entire system."
It looks like a Mr. Yuk sticker should be stuck onto that sugar dispenser!

It is no secret that processed foods can have a toxic effect on the human body when ingested in large enough quantities. Also included in these toxic substances are artificial sweeteners like aspartame (equal, nutrasweet) and sucralose (splenda)! Many people believe the reason that the FDA approves these as "safe" is because there is a lot of money to be made in the diet industry off of a zero calorie substance with a sweet taste.

Ingesting these "sweeteners" can cause severe adverse side effects that will do nothing but hinder your fat loss, fitness goals, and health in general!
Many adverse side affects from aspartame and sucralose ingestion have been reported, including but not limited to:

So does this mean that you should never eat anything sweet again? Of course not. Natural and safe sweeteners are grown in other countries and sold in the United States as "dietary supplements".

We recommend using Stevia. Many people believe that the FDA has not approved Stevia because it cannot be grown in the USA and too much money is being made by corporations selling poisons like aspartame and sucralose, which are chemically engineered here in the United States.

More about Stevia: From Wikipedia - "Stevia (also called sweetleaf, sweet leaf or sugarleaf) is a genus of about 150 species of herbs and shrubs in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), native to subtropical and tropical South America and Central America. As a sweetener, stevia's sweet taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar, although some of its extracts may have a bitter or liquorices-like aftertaste at high concentrations."

"With its extracts having up to 300 times the sweetness of sugar, stevia has garnered attention with the rise in demand for low-carbohydrate, low-sugar food alternatives. Stevia also has shown promise in medical research for treating such conditions as obesityand high blood pressure. Stevia has negligible effect on blood glucose, therefore it is attractive as a natural sweetener to diabetics and others on carbohydrate-controlled diets. However, health and political controversies have limited stevia's availablility in many countries; for example, the United States banned it in the early 1990s. Stevia is widely used as a sweetener in Japan, and it is now available in the US and Canada as a dietary supplement, although not as a food additive."

Studies have shown that getting enough sleep can be a key factor in fat loss and fitness.

Dr. Steven Heymsfield of Columbia University and St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York says this about sleep and eating: "There's growing scientific evidence that there's a link between sleep and the various neural pathways that regulate food intake."

"Sleep deprivation lowers leptin, a blood protein that suppresses appetite and seems to affect how the brain senses when the body has had enough food. Sleep deprivation also raises levels of grehlin, a substance that makes people want to eat."

Also, says The Early Show Medical Correspondent Dr. Emily Senay, "Lack of sleep can interfere with processing insulin, a metabolic process that helps regulate blood sugar."

A large study of many participants found a connection in individuals who get little rest and obesity. In fact, individuals who do not get enough sleep are plagued by an increasing risk factor for obesity. This might seem absurd to you, however there is plenty of medical evidence to back up the fact that a lack of rest results in overweight individuals. The results of this study are staggering. For example, the recommended hours one should sleep each night is 7-8. However, individuals who sleep only half the recommended amount are 73% more likely to be overweight or even obese than those getting enough sleep. The risk factors go down with the more sleep you get, however they still remain high. Individuals sleeping 5 hours a night are at a 50% risk level and those sleeping 6 hours are only at a 23% increased risk. However, you only need 7 or 8 hours each night to really reduce your risk of becoming obese, so find the time in your schedule to sleep the recommended amount and you just might see your pant size shrinking.

Careful with caffeine!
Surveys have shown that Americans drink a total of over 300 million cups of coffee every day. Caffeine can be a good jump-start in the morning.

However, studies have shown that caffeine can stay in your bloodstream for up to 12 hours or more. This can severely interfere with a good nights sleep. So for those of you who drink that morning cup of joe or take "energy" or diet pills containing caffeine, you may want to consume these no later than 10 am, or no less than 12 hours before bedtime, depending on your schedule.

Many energy pills and workout supplements contain caffeine which are widely popular. While caution needs to be exercised if working-out after taking these supplements, they can be a great way to turbo charge your workouts..

Top 10 Fat Loss Tips: #7
Take dietary supplements
vitamins, minerals, herbs, & amino acids

Vitamins -

Most of us know that taking a multi-vitamin is extremely important in maintaining a healthy lifestyle as these nutritional supplements help to fill-in the gaps of vitamins that we do not get from the foods that we eat. Vitamins, by definition, are substances that are naturally found in plants and in animals. When we eat plants and meat we get these vitamins and take them into our bodies. Vitamins are used basically as a support to the various functions of the body. Each vitamin has its own function and role in the body system including vitamins that help the fat-burning process.

Your metabolic rate basically boils down to chemical reactions in your body. Vitamins and minerals (and water) are important parts of these chemical reactions. If you don’t have enough of these components available for your body to use when it needs them, your body will be limited to using to what you’ve got. The production of sufficient energy is the best way to burn fat, and energy production depends on almost every known nutrient. Metabolism is governed by thousands of separate chemical reactions. To perform this process efficiently, our body needs a constant supply of nutrients. Without these nutrients (like vitamins and minerals, esp. vitamins B2, B3, B5, B6 & vitamin C) metabolism can become inefficient and sluggish. The best way to ensure good dietary nutrition is to follow a balanced diet and supplement with vitamins.

Minerals -
Recent clinical data indicates a positive relationship between calcium intake and fat-loss. Controlled fat loss studies indicate that increasing calcium intake can reduce the risk of being overweight.
Chromium is required for the metabolism of sugar. Without sufficient chromium, insulin is less effective in regulating blood-glucose levels. In this way, chromium helps to control cravings and reduce hunger. Chromium is a common ingredient in fat-loss supplements and can be found naturally in egg yolks, molasses, beef, hard cheese, liver, fruit juices, and whole grain bread.
Manganese helps regulate fat metabolism and blood-glucose, a healthy immune system, blood sugar regulation and normal bone growth require minute quantities of this mineral.
Zinc is an important mineral in appetite control and a deficiency in zinc can cause a loss of taste and smell, creating a need for stronger tasting foods (which tend to be sweeter, saltier and more fattening!).
Garcinia cambogia is a tropical fruit called Garcinia cambogia which is used in Thai and Indian cooking contains HCA (hydroxy-citric acid), which encourages your body to use carbohydrates as energy, rather than laying them down as fat. The HCA in this fruit seems to curb appetite, reduce food intake and inhibit the formation of fat and cholesterol.

Herbs-
There is no such thing as a pill that will magically make the pounds melt away, but herbs can promote weight loss in a number of ways. The action of certain herbs can signal to your brain that the stomach is full, while other herbs function thermogenically to speed up the body's metabolism. Thermogenic herbs, also known as stimulants, contain substances like caffeine that speed up body functions like heart rate, digestion, and respiration. Some other thremogenic herbs are green tea, nettle, and dandelion. Cayenne contains an ingredient called capsaicin that stimulates saliva, stimulates digestion and accelerates your metabolism at a safe level. Many diet pills contain the aforementioned herbs as well as many other ingredients that are too numerous to mention here.
Don't go habitual!: If you begin using stimulants habitually on a everyday basis you could become dependant on them and you may get withdrawal symptoms once you finally decide to stop using them. For example, even coffee has become a daily must for millions of people and many everyday coffee drinkers have reported headaches and other adverse symptoms when they go a day without it!
If you are already energetic, motivated, and hitting the gym on a frequent basis without the use of herbal stimulants then you may not need to use them at all. However, these stimulants can be very valuable to give you a boost of energy on days when you need that extra "push" to get going and get moving into that great fat-burning workout.
Here's some popular fat burning formulas:
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Amino Acids-
Amino acids are the basic structural building units of proteins. To promote fat loss several free form amino acids increase the mobilization and circulation of stored fats in the body by convert fat to energy. Amino acids provide many fat burning benefits when taken within a fat-burning workout program and also help to maintain lean muscle mass while burning fat when on a calorie restricted diet. 20 different amino acids are used to synthesize proteins. The most frequently single used amino acid in fat-burning supplements is L-Carnitine. L-Carnitine is required for the body’s ability to burn fat and lose weight. L-Carnitine helps transport fat to the part of the cell where it can be incinerated and turned into energy. Many thermogenic and other weight-loss formula's contain L-Carnitine. The amino acid formula that gives you the most bang for your buck is Superior Amino 2222 by Optimum Nutrition.
You can read more about it and purchase it here

If you do not include weight training as part of your fat-loss fitness solution then you are missing out on a very potent weapon in your fight against body fat!

Lifting weights will not necessarily make you BIG ! The big and bulky look may not be something that you are looking for. Some people are afraid that lifting weights will make you look "hulky" and big, especially women. It takes more than weights to make you get big. In order for you to get the massive muscles that you see in many "body-builders" you need to consume calories in excess while training with heavy weights. Most weight training programs that include moderate weight exercises will not make you big. Also take into account that most professional bodybuilders are taking massive supplements, most-likely pumped up on steroids and some female bodybuilders take male hormone shots to increase size.!

How Does Weight Training Lead To Fat Loss?
Many people only look to changing their diets and doing cardiovascular exercise as a way to burn body fat. Many people are unaware that weight training can also contribute to fat loss. Simply put, muscle tissue burns fat, and the act of increasing muscle, increases the rate at which the body can metabolize energy and burn that fat. Even while at-rest, your body will burn calories to maintain muscle. Increasing muscle can increase you BMR.

Lifting just a few weights by themselves will not constitute fat loss - but the combination of the right diet, exercise and weight training will give you the best chance of achieving your fat loss goals.

Weight training gets the heart pumping!
If you have read our Fat Loss Tip #2, up above, then you know that getting your heart pumping is a key component to burning calories and losing fat. It is no secret that training with weights will get your heart pumping into the fat burn zone!

Muscle weighs more than fat.
It is very possible to lose fat while gaining weight! Keep this in mind also; when you increase your muscle mass through weight training you will make your body appear more firm and compact, even though you may not actually be losing weight, you will look thinner since your body now occupies less space.

You will continue to burn calories After Training
Another reason why weight training is great for enhancing fat loss is because it causes your body to begin burning a large number of calories after you have finished training. This is a process known as EPOC (excess post exercise oxygen consumption) and it can be a strong contributor to total body fat loss. In addition, this EPOC measurement is significantly higher after a weight lifting session than after a moderate paced steady state cardio session making it much more effective.

So to be able to attack body-fat from all angles, make sure you include strength training in your workouts. The benefits are plentiful and you will be adding variety to your workouts by "mixing-up" your routines with weights inn addition to your cardio training.

It is vital to eat enough protein for peak body fat loss and weight control programs. Protein builds and helps maintain muscle which help burn more calories, all day long! When you cut back on calories, your body will burn muscle tissue for energy. If you are cutting calories and losing weight but still feel jiggly then you might need to add more protein to your diet due to it's muscle building and muscle maintaining properties. If you don't build new muscle with protein, you're flabbier after you diet. Keeping your muscle tone is extremely important.

Your body also burns more calories digesting protein than either carbohydrates or fats thus raising your metabolic rate as more protein is consumed. Also, since protein takes longer to digest, your body will feel full longer. This will help reduce the urge to continue eating and consuming more calories than you need.

Clinical studies have shown that in controlled groups that were forced to do the same amount of exercise, the group that was fed the higher protein diet burned more calories and lost more fat than the group that ate only minimal amounts of protein. In addition, the groups that consumed more protein usually reported that they felt stronger and more energetic.

In general, about 10 -15 percent of your total calories should come from protein. So, if you consume 2,000 calories per day, a minimum of 200 should come from protein, or about 50 grams. You should try to eat around one gram of protein per one kilogram of body weight, or around 0.4 grams per pound. People who are involved in high intensity workouts on a regular basis are encouraged to eat even higher than the average recommended amounts of daily protein.

If you find it difficult to eat the recommended daily amount of protein you should consider adding a protein drink to your daily meal plan. It is not uncommon to find a whey protein powder that packs 25 grams of protein per scoop. Add a scoop to your milk in the morning or add it to a fruit smoothie for an easy way to drink in those important grams of protein.
A very good value whey protein power is made by Optimum Nutrition.

Exercise everyday
and vary your workouts

If you are working-out effectively everyday then you have the greatest advantage of burning off more calories and thus body fat.

For example, let's say that you have a workout routine that burns 500 calories per session and you do this routine 4 days a week. This amounts to 2000 extra calories that you have burned off versus not doing that routine. However, if you workout 7 days a week you can burn-off an extra 1,500 calories per week. This amount to 6,000 calories per month or nearly 2 pounds of body-fat! Remember, 3,500 calories is roughly equal to one pound of body-fat.

Taking a day-off every now and then can feel really good. Especially if you are sore from a previous days work out or running low on energy. However, it is recommended that everyone get at least 30 minutes of exercise everyday.

If you have a job that requires you to be on your feet for most of the day then a day-off will not hurt you very badly, if at all. Many people with very active job activities never need to exercise in addition to their daily job routines and still manage to stay in great shape and never gain excess levels of body fat.

For those us us who work in offices and sit at a desk for a large portion of the day, it might be very difficult to get adequate exercise everyday without making extra time for a workout routine. In these cases you can make small changes to your daily habits that can contribute greatly to staying fit. For example, taking the stairway instead of the elevator is an excellent way to burn extra calories. Another great idea is to take a walk at lunch time instead of sitting around.

If you are feeling very low on energy then you might want to limit your exercise to a 30 minute walk or other short routine. On days where you can't make it to the gym or when you cannot do a regular fitness routine, a task such as walking the dog or walking to the corner store can help keep your metabolism revved-up during an otherwise sedentary day!

Don't get bored, vary your routines in needed - If you are always doing the same routine , it could become more difficult to get motivated to work-out on a daily basis. It is recommended that you find several calorie burning routines that you enjoy. This way you should never get bored and lessen the desire to take the day-off without engaging in an exercise routine.

Here are some work-out ideas that you might want to mix-in with your weekly exercise schedule.
These are activities that you can do on your normal days-off or do as alternatives if you get bored from your same daily rituals.

Activity	150 lbs	200 lbs	250 lbs
Walking (2 mph)	102	138	174
Walking (4mph)	186	246	306
Running (5mph)	322	429	534
Running (7mph)	423	561	696
Badminton	162	225	282
Basketball	210	282	351
Cycling (5mph)	150	201	249
Cycling (13mph)	318	426	534
Dancing	125	165	207
Racquetball	270	351	432
Skiing (downhill)	288	384	480
Skiing (x-country)	354	471	582
Squash	270	351	432
Swimming	115	153	192
Tennis	204	276	345
Volleyball	162	225	486

basal metabolic rate (BMR)
The rate at which energy is used by an organism at complete rest, measured in humans by the heat given off per unit time, and expressed as the calories released per kilogram of body weight or per square meter of body surface per hour.

cardiovascular exercise: used, designed, or performed to cause a temporary increase in heart rate (as to improve heart function and reduce the risk of heart disease) a cardiovascular workout: treadmills, stationary bicycles, stair climbers and other cardiovascular equipment.

Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) is a measurably increased rate of oxygen intake following strenuous activity. The extra oxygen is used in the processes that restore the body to a resting state and adapt it to the exercise just performed. EPOC is accompanied by an elevated consumption of fuel, some studies found that included fat.

fat metabolism: a metabolic process that breaks down ingested fats into fatty acids and glycerol and then into simpler compounds that can be used by cells of the body