So you find yourself a little hungry late at night, and probably would like to get something tasty to snack on and you probably can’t make up your mind whether to go with pumpkin pie or ice cream. The thing is, you might also be trying to lose weight or perhaps hoping to get six pack abs from your frequent exercises and “healthy eating” during the day, but those late night snacks are not helping.

It’s a common misconception that people believe it’s okay to eat late night snacks by eating healthy during the day and exercising regularly, they think it’s all it takes to get a nice toned flat stomach. It’s especially important to consider that eating a midnight snack will increase your waistline because at that time of day, your body is just about to be in ‘shutdown mode’ and sleep. When the body sleeps it remains idle and the function used to burn energy or calories isn’t fully operating (your metabolism).

The extra calories taken in just before bed will not break down as well and can potentially increase your body’s adipose fat, the fat your body stores away as unused energy. Hey, it’s okay, everyone needs a cookie every now and then (even at midnight), but you know what’s a better choice for you? Try snacks low in sugar and carbohydrates like peanut butter or cottage cheese, I don’t know about you but I love to dig in some peanut butter at night, it really satisfies my hunger or what I like to call ‘random urge to eat something.’

I wrote another article about how sometimes, late night hunger isn’t even hunger at all, sometimes it’s just thirst! To read more about how drinking water can help with weight loss, check out drink more water to lose weight.

Eating late at night is one of the primary reasons most people struggle with losing weight.  This is one of my biggest problems which I am working on, though I’ve improved a lot (I only grab a spoonful of all-natural peanut butter) my ultimate goal is to not have to grab even the slightest snack after 8pm.

So if you just crave sweet snacks at night and are also striving to achieve a nice set of six pack abs, consider alternative ‘snacks’ that are low in sugar and carbs. Eating those late night snacks are not helping you lose weight any faster, and will greatly delay your progress in getting six pack abs!

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The best cardio workout to burn fat isn’t jogging, as most people would imagine it is. Jogging is a slow and tedious exercise that barely increases your heart rate, and with jogging alone you wouldn’t be able to hit your target heart rate to burn fat. But what is jogging? Jogging is a variation of what cardio is, fast movement of the body that increases endurance over time.

To lose more weight, you have to increase the intensity of your exercises. An example of this is take free weight exercises such as arm curls, tricep extensions, and chest presses. These exercises would normally be done with keeping a set goal such as 10 reps per set, but a more challenging option would be to remove that set and just go with “how ever many I can do before I can’t anymore,” and just create sets around this mind set. This type of training increases intensity.

So how do you get the best cardio workout to burn fat from this? Take fast movement exercises like cardio kickboxing, and instead of doing the workout until it’s “done” consider doing the workout until you have gone 110%.

One of my favorite and powerful cardio workouts is high and max interval training, where the intensity of your exercises greatly changes in one second and lasts as long as you can last. Take a long and tedious jog, one that lasts about 30 minutes, you’d burn more fat from even just a high intensity cardio workout that lasts 10-12 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Max interval training is when you are pushing it to the limit most of the time, with very little rest in between exercises, and it helps you burn way more fat.

To keep things short and sweet, my max interval exercise of choice is doing a light warm up jog of about 90 seconds, then sprint 80-90% for 8 minutes straight! I burn the same amount of calories doing this as I do with about 35 minutes of boring jogging and my resting metabolic rate is more than tripled compared to the slower intensity jog. I save time and get more out of it!

What is your best cardio workout to burn fat? Please leave your comments below.

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Why green tea can help you burn fat

There are many ways to burn fat, ranging from exercise to eating better and even certain drinks like green tea, but does green tea burn fat? The Chinese have known for many generations of the health benefits of green tea, and more recently in the Western world green tea has been discovered to help people with burning fat and losing weight.

Green tea doesn’t directly just help with losing weight, the ingredients in this plant enhance your natural fat burning machine known as the metabolism. The tea also greatly boosts human energy levels from the caffeine found in it, which translates into more physical activity accomplished. Those who drink more green tea will find themselves accomplishing more things throughout the day.

So how else does green tea burn fat? By itself, not much, but in combination with eating the right foods and daily exercise, green tea can be that little boost that makes all the difference. You wouldn’t want to have the desire to do so much only to find yourself getting pooped out too early, just drink some green tea and you’ll be good to go.

Personally, I like to drink green tea early in the day to boost my energy. I usually try to take some tea in between meals as I don’t like mixing the flavor with other foods or drinks, it just doesn’t work for me .

I sometimes add honey or lemon for an extra pinch of flavor. I boil up water on the stove for my tea, I try to use the microwave as little as possible due to potential health problems associated with it.

Does green tea burn fat if you add too much sugar? In short, yes, you will still gain the weight loss benefits of the green tea, but according to nutritionist Isabel De Los Rios, you should limit your sugar intake if you want to continue to burn fat. Too much sugar consumption triggers the release of insulin, which is a fat-holding hormone, it forces your body retain fat, instead of burning it as fuel.

How’s your green tea helping you to burn fat? We want to know! Please leave your comments below.

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