• Stay hydrated. Active individuals actually require more water and should aim to consume roughly 1 gallon per day to avoid becoming dehydrated. And if you’re one of those people who hates drinking water, consider this: Dehydrated individuals burn less fat than their well-watered counterparts.
   

• Have a tea party. Green tea, in beverage or capsule form, is a reliable fat-burning aid and is generally safe for most people.
   

• Caffeine. Did you know that drinking coffee before cardio will cause you to burn more fat? Subjects who consumed 300 mg of caffeine two hours before exercising on a stationary bike for 30 minutes were not only able to work out at a higher intensity (more total calories burned) but they also used a much greater percentage of body fat for fuel.
   

• Be a fitness nerd. Watch and read everything you can get your hands on to learn more about the body, exercise and nutrition. The more you know, the better off you’ll be in the gym.
   

• Be an Iron Man or Woman. There’s no overstating the importance of resistance training. Adding muscle to your frame through lifting weights causes your body to speed up its metabolism. For every pound of lean muscle you forge, count on losing an extra 35–50 calories per day, or up to 1,500 calories a month or 18,000 calories per year while resting. That’s approximately 5 pounds of body fat you can eliminate at rest.
   

• Limit rest periods. Don’t spend your time between sets chatting on the treadmill. To add a calorie-burning element to your weight training, limit rest periods to 30–45 seconds. Resting 30 seconds between sets has been shown to increase caloric burn by 50%, compared to a three-minute rest period. You may not be as strong heading into your next set, but the added calorie burn may be worth it.
   

• Speed up the pace. To help amp up your calorie burn between sets — and to accomplish more in less time — incorporate supersets or drop sets on weight-training days or perform your exercises circuit-style. You can also speed up your workout by doing your ab moves between other exercises, rather than waiting until the end of your routine.
   

• Expect progression. Don’t get stuck in a rut with the same weights and exercises. Expect that after 4–8 weeks, your body will have adjusted and will be starving for something new. Aim to make incremental increases to your weight loads, try new exercises, shorten rest periods, incorporate advanced techniques like supersets, change from barbells to dumbbells…anything to keep your body guessing and improving. (That is why we keep the class motivate by changing the routine every day!)

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• Be free. Free weights force your body to recruit more total muscle because they call on stabilizer muscles to balance the weight, a superior advantage to the predetermined range of motion that machines have to offer.

• If your goal is to lean out, follow your weight training with cardio. Since lifting depletes glycogen stores, your body is more likely to use fat as its first fuel source during cardio. Also, the combination of the two results in a higher caloric burn post workout.
   

• Go for the after-burn. Resistance training also burns more calories after exercise. One study found that after a 30-minute full-body workout in which subjects trained with their 10RM weights, resting metabolic rate was elevated by 20% for two days following the exercise session. In a 180-pound man, that percentage equates to an average 400 extra calories burned per day.
   

• Overload. Training with the progressive-overload principle helps rev your metabolism. Pushing your muscles beyond what they’re currently trained to overcome forces them to adapt and regenerate themselves so they’re ready the next time such a stimulus is encountered.
   

• Think “Ronnie.” Train like a bodybuilder. Doing 3–5 sets of 8–12 reps with relatively short rest periods has been shown to improve your anabolic environment and metabolism.
   

• Train abs for endurance. If your goal is to have a slimmer waistline, don’t train your abs with heavy loads. Use a weight that allows you to get at least 15 reps per set, allowing minimal rest between sets (less than 60 seconds). Or use only your own bodyweight as resistance while maximally contracting your abs on each repetition.
   

• Cardio, cardio, cardio. This helps you with the simple philosophy behind fat loss: Burn more calories than you take in. If your goal is fat loss, incorporate 4–6, 30–60-minute sessions per week into your training schedule.
   

• Tread heavily. What’s the best exercise and intensity to burn maximal fat? Researchers found that jogging on the treadmill at about 70% of your maximal heart rate, or MHR (subtract your age from 220 and multiply by 0.7 for your heart rate in beats per minute), was optimal, burning about 40 grams of fat per hour of exercise. Going above or below this intensity burned significantly less fat, as did pedaling on a stationary cycle, regardless of intensity.
   

• Post-cardio burn. Following aerobic exercise, your resting metabolic rate remains elevated for anywhere from 60 minutes to about 12 hours, depending on the intensity and duration of the exercise session.
   

• Taper off. Instead of starting slow and building up speed, do your high-intensity cardio early in your workout and taper off to a slow finish to burn significantly more fat. After a 2–3-minute warm-up, immediately kick it into high gear (80%–85% max heart rate) for 15–20 minutes before slowing down (60%–65% max heart rate) for the last 10–20 minutes.
   

• Vary your cardio. Whether you’re lifting weights or doing cardio, the trick is to keep your body from adapting to what you’re doing. Regularly changing your cardio mode is the best way to keep your body responding to your efforts.
   

• Interval for success. Unless you’re a highly conditioned athlete, you can’t maintain a very intense pace for very long, so the best way to improve your aerobic fitness and burn fat is with intervals. That is, you alternate very intense periods of work with lower-intensity sessions in which you recover.
   

• Are you a fidgeter? Maybe you should be. Fidget to fight fat.  Several studies have shown that toe-tappers, while completely annoying at the office, will burn more calories over the course of the day than the stationary man.
  
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