Five ways to burn fat faster

Sick of spending hours at the gym with nothing to show for it?

Are you wondering whether it’s all been worth the countless hours spent on the treadmill when the only pounds you seem to be shedding are from your bank balance?

Do not worry, DietPixie has come up with five tips on how to turn your trips to the gym into real fat-burners.

1. Always do a warm-up

Spending five minutes warming up before you exercise will help you lose weight quicker.

Why? Because it means that you will use more muscle fibres when you finally start your routines. But choose a warm-up that involves all of your main muscle groups, not just your legs.

In fact, the best warm-up you can do is five minutes of light walking while pumping your arms back and forth.

2. Hit the ground running

Rather than starting slowly and building up your intensity as you go along, do it the other way around.

Saving your energy until the end may prevent you from losing as much weight as you can.

So as soon as you have finished your warm-up, go straight into a 15-minute spell of high-intensity cardio work. You can slow down for the last 15 minutes.

3. Spend less time resting between weight training sets

If you want to burn fat, it’s important to keep your heart racing.

The more your heart pumps, the more calories you will be using up, so try and keep your rest periods brief.

A good rule of thumb is 30 seconds between weight training sets.

4. Be cool

If it’s hot you are less likely to produce your best. Heat stresses your body out and you will not perform as well as you would like.

If you are exercising at home, put fan near your workout area. If you are at the gym, wait for the treadmill that has an in-built fan. It will be worth the wait.

5. Two routines are better than one

Splitting your routine into two parts is a far more effective way of burning fat.

Doing two 20 minute spells rather than one 40-minute period will keep your metabolism boosted for longer, thereby increasing the amount of calories burned from the same routine.

Divide your workout into two smaller, high-intensity sessions - preferably one in the morning and one in the evening - to get the best results.