For any dieter trying to lose weight, burning fat is the most important thing you can do. If you're not burning fat all your going to lose is muscle, and the more muscle you lose the more fat you'll actually gain. The more muscle your body has it naturally has a higher metabolic rate during your body's resting state. If your body has a higher fat percentage the slower your metabolism will be.
Don't skip your breakfast. As soon as you wake up in the morning, your body has just finished an 8 hour fast. Following such a fast without nutrients, your body enters a catabolic (muscle wasting) state and starts breaking down protein. This is a crucial time to get some much needed food as soon as possible. A healthy breakfast is a fundamental part of any successful fat-burning diet.
Consume a meal every 2 to 3 hours. This means that you will be eating a meal 5 to 6 times a day. Not only will this kind of meal regime stimulate muscle maintenance and fat loss, it is also an essential technique for controlling food cravings. You see, when people miss a meal, or neglect eating for a while, their blood sugar plummets, and their will power becomes weak. In other words, people who go a long time without eating are much more likely to cheat on their diet. Thus, eating every two to three hours will help eliminate those cravings that may be the main reason that you have failed all dieting attempts in the past.
Even if you are one of the few who can fight off the cravings for food caused by missing meals, you must still be careful. If you go without eating too regularly, your body will actually activate enzymes that store fat. This will make losing weight much more difficult. So don't do it! Eat!
You must reduce how many carbs your eating. Your body's fuel will be attained from a mixture of protein, carbs and fats. When you reduce your carbohydrate intake, your body's stores of carbs get quickly depleted. This forces your body to utilize a higher amount of free fatty acids (fat) for fuel. Decreasing carbs will also cause a hormonal fat-burning effect. When you reduce cards, insulin (a storage hormone) is lowered and glycogen (a fuel mobilizing hormone) increases. This causes a greater number free fatty acids to be released from fat cells and burned, assuming that you're working out properly.
Opt for compound exercises instead of performing isolation exercises. Compound exercises use more than one muscle across multiple joints, and isolation exercises attempt to train only one muscle at a time. The best thing about using compound exercises is that you will be training the most muscle in a given amount of time.
Generally, the more muscle you use per exercise, the larger the energy (calorie) demand will be on your body. This in turn, uses more energy, which is definitely good, but it also encourages the body to hold on to its lean muscle during fat burning phases, which helps keep your resting metabolic rate up. In addition, compound exercises have been shown to stimulate the release of your body's natural anabolic hormones. This further helps you maintain lean muscle.
Be accountable to someone. If you unable to afford a trainer full-time, hire one to write your diet and exercise programs for you and monitor your progress. You may only need to be in contact with your trainer once a month, but having them there will offer you someone you are accountable to on a continual basis. This will help you stay focused.
If you can't afford a trainer, or don't want to work with a trainer, try to find a workout partner. This makes you more committed to exactly when and where you will be training. There will be less missed workouts, and you'll have more consistency in the gym and your workouts in general. If this seems impossible or undesirable to you, attempt to look for one good friend who totally backs you, and who doesn't mind you calling them up every few days and reporting your progress. It might feel like your friend is almost like a sponsor in an AA meeting at times, but believe me, that's not such a terrible thing to possess in your life when you're attempting to burn fat. This is even more important when you're continually in the company of people who don't care about what they eat.