How to trick your body into burning more fat

Finish eating by 2pm

Most of us eat from 8am to 8pm, but a study presented at 2016 The Obesity Society Annual Meeting suggests that ending your last meal by 2pm can reduce hunger pangs, as well as help your body burn more fat at night. However, more research remains to be done to see if this results in weight loss or other health benefits over time.

Get a little stressed

Having excess calories can lead to your body accumulating white fat. On the other hand, brown fat, another naturally occurring fat that's more common in people with a low body mass index, helps to burn energy to create body heat. According to a report in Experimental Physiology, some stress may stimulate more brown fat activity, so remember that not all stress is bad.

Sip on green tea

Hydrate with green tea before your workout sesh. The brew may improve your endurance during a workout and help your body draw on fat stores for energy, shares one US study.

Drink milk

Post-workout, milk could help you burn twice as much fat as compared to a carbohydrate drink such as a sports drink, and those who drank a soy beverage lost no fat at all, reports a study supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the US National Dairy Council. Additionally, of the three drinks, drinking milk supposedly resulted in the most muscle gain.

Eat your oily fish

Fat from fish oils not only prevent unhealthy fat accumulation in your body, research published in Scientific Reports shares that it encourages fat storage cells to burn the fat for energy.

Try a low-fat diet

Cutting carbs is one of the most common ways of dieting, and it has been proven to reduce insulin levels and burn more fat. Even then, a study that appeared in Cell Metabolism shows that if you're gunning for greater fat loss, a low-fat diet seems to be even more effective. The study had a small sample size of 19 participants, so further investigation is needed, but lead researcher Kevin Hall, PhD, concludes that in the end, the best diet may be one you can actually stick to.

Don't skimp on sleep

According to one US study, getting enough snooze time can encourage your body to burn fat, whereas cutting back on rest could reduce your body's fat-burning potential by half. Being short on sleep could also make you hungrier, as it increases ghrelin production, a hormone that induces you to eat more while making your body burn less energy.

Sprinkle some cinnamon

Spicy foods may be known to burn fats, but if you can't take the heat, cinnamon is a good alternative. Like capsaicin, the compound that gives chilli its kick, cinnamaldehyde in cinnamon helps turn fat into energy. Conveniently, the fragrant spice also goes well with many sweet and savoury dishes as well as drinks.

Choose aerobic over resistance workouts

Resistance training like weight lifting may help with glucose regulation, but aerobics workouts like running, swimming and walking, is supposedly more efficient at targeting body fat, shares a report published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

Be happy

When you're happy, your body releases more serotonin, a hormone that makes you feel contented and relaxed. Apparently, according to recent tests in the US done on worms often used to study biological processes, serotonin could also generate more fat burning in your gut.

This article was first published in Shape