With summer here, following a few tactics can help you achieve the best look possible when slipping back in to those shorts, tanks, tees and swim suits. Your metabolic rate is the rate at which your body burns calories. Burning more calories than consumed is the goal to becoming leaner and more defined. You want to show that body off now, don’t you?

Calorie burning provides energy for three main functions:

Basil Metabolic Rate: This is the amount of calories you burn just by being alive, even when you’re doing nothing. It accounts for approximately 60 percent of calories you burn.

Burning Calories for Activity: This is the energy used during movement- from lifting

your arm to buttoning your shirt to cleaning house. This accounts for approximately 30 percent of the calories you burn.

Dietary Thermogenesis: The calories burned in the process of eating, digesting, absorbing and using food accounts for approximately 10 percent of the calories you burn.

You can influence all of these factors, and speed up your rate of burning calories, using the following tactics:

• Build muscle: increase the amount of muscle in your body. For every extra pound of muscle you put on, your body uses around 50 extra calories a day. Leaner is better, as lean tissue is “active”. Fatty tissue just hangs around, literally, while lean tissue burns calories due to their active status.

• Be active: the average person burns about 30 percent of calories through daily activity; sedentary people only use about 15 percent. Taking every opportunity to move more can make quite a difference to the amount of calories you burn.

• Eat spicy foods: spices can raise the metabolic rate by up to 50

percent for up to 3 hours after you’ve eaten a spicy meal. I love spicy foods, and notice when I eat them, that it tends to make me perspire. Yes the food itself might be hot with spices, but my metabolism is also ablaze!

• Aerobic exercise: high-intensity exercise makes you burn more calories during exercise and for several hours afterwards. The after burn is called Excess Postexercise Oxygen Consumption. After exercise the body must use increased amounts of oxygen to replenish energy supplies, lower tissue temperatures, and return the body to a resting state. Getting your heart rate up is one of the keys to the calorie burn kingdom.

• Portion Size, Frequency, Quality: eating healthy small meals often will keep your metabolism moving faster than larger, less frequent meals and help to control your hunger, making you less likely to binge. Start with a balanced breakfast. Skipping this meal is the worst thing you can do as it tells your body that it is in starve mode, so it slows metabolically, storing fat, waiting for its next intake of nutrition to burn for energy. The goal is to burn calories around the clock by teaching the body that it gets fed every 2 to 4 hours. What can you port from home for your day out that is smart snacking to keep the calorie burn on high? Fruits and nuts, power bars, protein drinks, yogurts, the list is endless, but planning ahead is required.

Buffed, toned tight and beautiful. Now show it off with PRIDE

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