You don’t need to be a gym junkie living on a diet of vegetable soup and water to lose weight. Sometimes it’s the little things that matter most. In fact, you could burn an extra 200-300 calories without even breaking a sweat simply by making a few tweaks to your daily routine. You’ll be surprised by just how easy it is.
Research led by Professor James Levine from the Mayo Clinic in the US suggests your basal metabolic rate (BMR), the energy expended by your body at rest, “accounts for about 60-75% of the calories you burn everyday”. That is, the majority of the calories we burn are from non-exercise activities rather than intentional exercise.
However, we are a society obsessed with convenience – and that makes it much harder to burn calories. Day-to-day activities, such as shopping, paying bills and ordering takeaway, can all be done online without even leaving the house. If you own an internet-enabled phone, you don’t even have to get off the couch. It’s no wonder our waistlines are getting wider.
With a little shift in thinking, you can budge the kilos faster. Here are a few no-sweat, non-food ways to boost metabolism, burn more calories and fast-track your weight loss.
Move and groove
Kick your metabolism into gear by boosting your daily incidental activity level and your hips will thank you. Professor Levine refers to this as ‘NEAT’, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and he claims NEAT activities account for “100-200 calories a day; a calorie deficit that potentially could account for the entire obesity epidemic”.
Through his research, Professor Levine found that people who tap their feet, prefer standing to sitting and generally move a lot burn up to 350 calories more a day than those who sit still. That adds up to almost 17kg a year!
So take yourself off cruise control, reduce sedentary time and up the ante on everyday activities:
- Forget the lift and take the stairs
- Stand, don’t sit
- Fidget, twitch and tap your toes
- Get into a house-cleaning frenzy
- Mow the lawn and tend to the garden
- Park further away from your destination. Or better still, leave the car at home and walk.
- Don’t forget the dog!
Sleep right, sleep tight
Quite possibly the most-celebrated weight loss tip of all – get at least seven hours sleep. Scientific research has proven that regularly missing out on vital snooze time can lead to significant weight gain.
Studies have found sleep-deprived people have more of the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin and less of the hormone leptin, which tells us when we are full. To make matters worse, lack of ZZZs can also send the body into panic mode causing the release of cortisol – the stress hormone that stimulates hunger. With the body in a spin with all the hunger signals, the cookie jar looks more enticing and the exercise plans get put on the backburner.
Resting up will make it easier for you to control your calorie intake and stick to your training regime.
Water wise
In more ways than one, water is invaluable when it comes to weight loss. Not only is it calorie-free, so replacing fizzy drinks and other high-sugar drinks with H2O will cut hundreds of empty calories, but it will boost your metabolism too.
On average, six to eight glasses of water should be enough to keep a person hydrated. However, you shouldn’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink up. Thirst can often be mistaken for hunger causing you to overeat, so try satisfying your hunger pangs with fluid first.
Not swallowing it? Sure to have you gulping it down in no time, new research suggests drinking water before meals significantly enhances weight loss. The US study, led by Brenda Davy, Associate Professor of Nutrition at Virginia Tech, found people who drank just two glasses of water before breakfast, lunch and dinner ate less food, shed more kilos and kept the weight off.
Chew the day away
Do you struggle to get through the mid-morning and 3pm munchies? Slip a piece of sugar-free chewing gum into your mouth and avoid mindless snacking. Trading the chocolate chip biscuit, 60 calories, for one piece of sugar-free gum, 3 calories, is a saving of 57 calories.
Also, a University of Rhode Island study found that people who chewed gum for one hour in the morning consumed 68 fewer calories at lunch and didn’t compensate by eating more later on. Do this every day and you can shave kilos off your waistline. Plus, chewing gum burns calories – every little bit counts!
Get the giggles
They say laughter is the best medicine and who are we to disagree? While it’s not going to churn through anywhere near as many calories as a stint on the treadmill, laughing can actually help you slim down.
Research published in the International Journal of Obesity suggests that laughter increases energy expenditure by as much as 20% and the longer you giggle the more calories you burn. In fact, laughing for just 15 minutes a day could amount to a weight shift of up to approximately 4kg a year. So, go on, laugh yourself skinny!
Keep it cool
Turn down the air conditioning, have cool showers, enjoy your drinks ice cold and shiver away those unwanted calories. Research suggests the colder our body temperature, the harder our BMR has to work to warm us up – and that means a resulting increase in energy expenditure. Don’t go getting hypothermic on us, but give it a thought next time you complain about the cold and reach for your sweater.
Less is more
Are your eyes too big for your belly? Do you eat those last two mouthfuls even though you are ‘full up to here’ to save yourself from the guilt of wasting good food? Extensive research suggests the more food placed in front of you, the more you eat – hungry or not.
According to veteran US researcher Dr Brian Wansink, deep bowls and large plates increase your food consumption by 20%.
Trick yourself thin and replace your oversized dishes with the smaller salad plates, enjoy your morning latte in a cup instead of a mug and, wine connoisseur or not, swap the red wine glass for the white. While you won’t even notice the unnecessary calories you have just shaved from your diet, your shrinking waist will.