Everyone wants to burn a little extra fat at times during their training.

Check out these 5 fat burning tips

1. Eat breakfast EVERY MORNING!  Mom knew what she was talking about when she told you, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  When you wake up in the morning your body is in a fasted state.  Eating breakfast revs up your metabolism and gets you energized to start your day.  There is a reason most people feel sluggish in the morning.

2. Have a post workout meal.  Your post workout meal should come within an hour of you finishing your training.  This will ensure your muscles get refueled and aren’t used as fuel for the fat burning workout you just finished.  Focus on getting fast digesting protein and carbohydrates for this meal.  In fact, your post workout meal should be your largest meal of the day with breakfast running a close second.

3.  Resistance Training. More lean muscle equals a higher metabolism.  The more muscle you have, the easier it is for you to burn fat.  The best way to build muscle is to incorporate compound lifts like the deadlift, squat, and clean and press.  Compound lifts deliver the most bang for the buck in terms of building muscle and burning calories.  Focus on sets of 5-8 reps to increase lean muscle.  Sticking exclusively with high rep training is one of the biggest fat loss myths. Per John Alvino…

Using high reps exclusively can actually cause you to lose muscle mass during a fat loss phase. This will have a negative impact on your metabolism, thus making it that much harder for you to lose your next pound of fat. Even further, this type of resistance training will cause you to lose strength and power, for the exact same reasons that low intensity cardio does.

4.  Conditioning. Low intensity cardio gets you nowhere!  Instead focus on high intensity conditioning and interval training.  Focus on output during your cardio sessions.  Get your money’s worth and get it done.  Too many people focus on calorie burning during their session when in fact higher intensity interval sessions will burn far more fat.  To read more on my thoughts about low intensity cardio versus high intensity conditioning click here.

5.  DONT SKIP MEALS!  This is one of the biggest mistake most people make.  They skip meals and limit their caloric intake too much.  As I’ve discussed above, you need energy to train hard and heavy and make it through high intensity conditioning sessions.  Skipping meals leads to less fuel which leads to less energy equaling less output during your workout.  So, you’re burning even fewer calories.  Taking in too few calories also slows down your metabolism.  Try trimming your calories 10-20% for no more than 4-5 consecutive days.  Staying in a caloric deficit will cause your metabolism to slow as well.  Make sure your caloric intake on those other days are at maintenance levels to ensure your continued fat burning.

Incorporate these five tips and you should see a near immediate improvement in your energy levels, lean muscle mass, and fat loss results.