5 Proven Tips to Rev Up Your Metabolism, Flatten Your Tummy and Get You in Shape!

By Laura Ng

Over the years of helping vegetarians to lose weight, I've gathered some low-cost yet very effective and easy-to-apply tactics that you can start using right away.

Disclaimer: I can't guarantee that you'll shed pounds in how many days or weeks because that largely depends on how much toxin you have built up in your body and current health conditions that could have slowed the metabolic pick-up and weakened the fat-burning effect, and how close you follow my methods. But I can guarantee you'll surely lose fat with these strategies.

1. The Power of Lemon

Every morning right after you wake up and brush your teeth, slice and juice out 1/3 of a lemon and mix with 200cc of warm water, without adding sugar, sweetener, salt or any other stuff. PURE lemon water. If you feel too sour for your taste, increase the water volume.

Drink it down slowly. Keep the remaining in the fridge for future use.

Warm lemon water in the morning helps to cleanse your colon and enhance your digestive power. Additionally, it contains vitamin C that will boost your immune system.

Lemon juice is acidic by nature. But after digestion in the body, it leaves behind alkaline ash, which can help to regulate our blood pH.

Many fatal viruses and cancer cells will proliferate in acidic human body. Keeping your blood pH normal (i.e slightly alkaline) can prevent many deadly diseases.

More importantly, it can suppress your appetite and make you eat lesser than you normally would. Thanks to its alkaline-forming effect that dilutes your gastric acid and mitigates your stomach's rumbling sensation.

It's best to allow 30 mins to 1 hour for lemon water to perform its job in your body before breakfast.

Don't belittle this cheap method, it's really effective. Of course, don't expect to drink for only 2 days and get results. Drink it every day.

You can tune the mixture to suit your taste and preference, but make sure it's not too sour (acidic) that it'll erode your teeth.

2. Vanguard against High Cal Intake

Lunch now and watch the sequence. It's important.

Take in 3 tbsps of soup and followed by some veggies before you start munching on other food on the table.

Not only soup is fraught with easily-digestible nutrients that can immediately meet some percentage of your nutritional needs upfront, but also it dilutes your gastric acid and makes you feel less hungrier.

Fiber-rich vegetables can fill up your stomach quickly. They can also serve as glucose stabilizer that slows your carb conversion and glucose uptake to help prevent diabetes.

With soup and veggies as your double frontline calorie fighter, it would be pretty difficult for you to heap on excess calories. Of course, you still need to satisfy your daily calorie needs or you won't get sufficient fuel to perform your tasks.

If you don't have soup on the table, then drink a glass of warm plain water 5 mins before meal. Same principle, it will dilute your gastric acid and make you feel a little full upfront. Then, shove in some vegetables and you're all set for a low-cal intake.

If you find vegetables distasteful, start learning to eat now. They're not as disgusting as you think. I used to hate vegetables and consume 99% meat in my diet. I got serious constipation problem; I only passed motion once in 2 - 3 weeks and got very sticky (and stinky... urghhh) stool. But now, I do it 2 - 3 times daily and my stool is easily flushable (no need for strong toilet cleaner). That's the power of veggies.

To overcome your "veggie-phobia", begin with a small amount of veggies and cut them into small bits so that when you mix them in your food, you can hardly notice their presence and the veggie taste will not appear so strong that you feel like vomiting.

No matter what, you MUST learn to eat more vegetables. They're not just rich in fiber that can help you cut down your calorie intake, but they also provide good amount of minerals and some vitamins for your metabolic needs.

Hey wait! When I say "eat more vegetables", I don't mean to ask you to eat until you get very bloated with fiber but lack in calories. The problem with modern mankind is that they're seriously deprived of fibrous food. So, you have to eat more if you're one of them. But make sure you get enough calorie as well. In other words, balance your fiber and calorie intake.

3. Snack It Up

People often ask me, "How come you eat so much but yet you don't grow fat easily? That doesn't make sense at all!"

I must admit that I take 5 - 6 meals a day. That's why it often gives people the wrong impression that I eat a lot as a whole. But I control the quality and quantity of food very well. That's why instead of growing fatter, I get to slim down and maintain my physique. And most importantly, I don't feel hungry easily with that number of meal consumption.

If you follow tip #1 above, you'll dramatically cut down your calorie intake for breakfast, which may bring about a slight hunger pang at around 10 A.M. (between breakfast and lunch).

Do not endure that hunger call till lunch (say, 12 P.M.). Your calorie uptake from lunch will become more if you do so. I strongly suggest that you prep some mix fruits plus a handful of nuts and seeds for your snack. They're easy to bring from your home to workplace.

Eat to fill up your calorie needs for that 2 hours only — from 10 A.M. to 12 P.M. (you'll soon know how much snack to consume as your experience grows). Do not overeat your snack such that it'll disrupt your normal lunch hour and intake. Same goes for the snack in between your lunch and dinner.

Vary the combination of your snack so you won't feel bored easily.

Each meal that you take will rev up your metabolism and pull out body fat from fat reserve to fuel your digestive system and other metabolic activities.

True, some unused calories from food breakdown will go to your fat stores. But the rate at which your body burns calories (from fat reserve) is faster than the rate at which the calorie (from food breakdown) converts and deposits into fat stores when you take more but smaller portion sizes of meals.

4. No Food after Dinner

After the snack at 3 or 4 P.M., you should feel pretty hungry by the time you reach home at 6 or 7 P.M.

As usual, take a fiber-rich, nutrient-packed and calorie-sufficient meal.

With the high fiber diet plus a relatively slower metabolism at night, you shouldn't feel the urge to pick up snack or supper. The slow stream of energy flow will suffice to fuel your metabolic activities till the next morning.

Remember I told you just now sometimes I take 6 meals a day?

Okay, that's because when I was outside and in a rush I usually didn't take much fiber and ample calorie from the food I ate. So, when I reached home at around 9 or 10 P.M., my stomach would rumble. Then I'll get in the kitch and whip up a small bowl of oatmeal. I'll sprinkle some almond nuts, pumpkin seeds and milled flax.

You can also make a cup of warm almond milk, and put in some granola, just enough to fulfil your hunger but yet not too much that it'll disrupt your sleep.

I mean, where possible, finish your dinner and that's it. If for some reasons you feel slightly hungry a couple of hours after dinner, then use what you have (preferably nutritional food) in the pantry or kitch to fill your stomach. Get it?

It's best to always stock up some dried, healthy food in your pantry, just in case.

5. The 8/12 Rule

It's not a matter of how long you work out, but more on the quality of exercise you do that produces amazing fat loss results.

Yes, you should exercise at least 3 times a week, but each time you can make quality out of your exercise to achieve maximum effect.

Just a 20-min exercise will help you burn more fat than many others who engage in steady-state cardio exercises.

But if you've lost track in exercises for months or even years, I suggest that you start off with simple exercises that you can easily do. Just that you need to add in some patterns to achieve what I meant by "maximum effect".

Take walking. It's literally the easiet exercise that anyone can do. But you can switch between fast and slow pace to make your body burn more fat from its fat reserve, like this — 8-sec fast pace, then 12-sec slow pace and get back up to 8-sec fast pace and so forth.

Power walk or brisk walk requires you to walk at a certain fast pace and maintain at that level. If you introduce interval training (the 8/12 rule) in it, you'll get much better results in fat loss.

Not only you can apply this 8/12 rule to walking, but any exercise that you do, like push-up, cycling, rope skipping, swimming, jogging, etc.

Interval training is powerful, but you may get injured easily due to its sudden switch from a low-intensity workout to a high-intensity one. Hence, always begin with a 5-min warmup and end with a 5-min cooldown, to prevent injuries.

More Tips...

You probably are feeling excited to try out these 5 tips now. But before you go, I have a piece of advice for you.

If you apply only one or two techniques above, you may not see apparent results in short time. But if you put them all into action and do it every day, I promise you'll get good results not long from now. When you do, send me your before-and-after photo and I'll show the world how amazing you've become. I'm sure your result will inspire others to get on a better lifestyle.

Last but not least, losing weight and keeping healthy at the same time requires you to know more than just what I've shared here. Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you Slim For Life Secrets to fast track your weight loss success without sacrificing your health.

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