Even if you get plenty of exercise, you won't lose as much weight if you are not tailoring your daily regimen for efficient fat burning. To increase your body's ability to burn fat, there are a number of steps you can take, both at the gym and at home. Workout strategies, sleep habits and meal planning all work toward increasing your fat-burning potential.
Step 1
Include cardiovascular workouts in your exercise regimen. Most cardio is very efficient in burning fat. Jogging and running on a treadmill are both considered excellent methods to burn calories quickly. Stair climbing, rowing, cross-county skiing, and bicycling are also considered very effective forms of exercise. If your workout regimen does not include some cardio training, then you are not making efficient use of your workout time.
Step 2
Alternate between quick sprinting and slower jogging as you exercise. While jogging is already considered a highly efficient method for burning fat, you can get even more out of the workout with so-called "interval training." This strategy of alternating between a fast and slow jog improves cardiovascular health and increases the body's ability to burn fat.
Step 3
Get a full 8 hours of sleep each night. The National Sleep Foundation explains that a lack of sleep impedes your ability to lose weight. If you do not get a decent night's rest, you cannot burn fat as efficiently.
Step 4
Eat breakfast every day. While you may be tempted to skip a meal in hopes of cutting calories, this can actually negatively impact your weight-loss goals. When you eat a meal in the morning, this causes your metabolism to speed up and helps your body naturally burn fat, according to Barbara Rolls, a professor of nutrition at Penn State University.
Step 5
Eat smaller portions throughout the entire day. After beginning with an early breakfast, you can keep your metabolic rate up by periodically nibbling on small snacks. Six smaller meals throughout the day will help your body burn fat more efficiently than three larger meals.
Step 6
Avoid alcohol before eating. Alcohol adds extra, unneeded calories to your meal, making it harder to burn excess fat. Along with the extra calories provided from the beverage, Redbook explains that drinking before a meal also leads to overeating. You are likely to consume an extra 200 calories if you drink before eating. When taking in extra calories, your body must first burn those calories before it can begin to efficiently burn excess body fat.
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