December is rapidly approaching, which means that so are the summer holidays. Perhaps you have already booked a family holiday where you know you will be wearing a bathing suit, or you know that you have a few events ahead that you want to look your best for.

Whatever your motivation is to look good for summer, here are a few tips you can follow to help you in terms of fat loss:

Exercise Regularly for Fat Loss

To lose fat for summer, you need to burn more calories than you consume in a day. Exercise is a great way to help create a deficit when paired with a reduction in calories consumed. Doing high-intensity workouts, such as interval training or Tabata workouts that incorporate plyometric exercises like burpees and jump squats, is one of the best ways to burn a lot of calories in a shorter amount of time, while also increasing your metabolism for hours after the workout is complete. This way, you end up burning more calories even after the workout is finished.

Resistance training aids fat loss by helping you build muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn on a daily basis. This is one of the best tips for fat loss, as more muscle will also help you keep the weight off, even after summer has ended.

Another workout tip that is great if you are able to track your heart rate is to try and work out at 60-70% of your maximum heart rate for optimal fat loss. You can roughly work out your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. For example, if you are 30 years old, your maximum heart rate will be around 190 beats per minute, and your ultimate fat-burn zone will be between 114 and 133 beats per minute.

Sleep Your Way to a Summer Body

A lack of sleep increases levels of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and therefore interferes with fat loss. Insufficient sleep also leads to reduced willpower and increases the likelihood of you making bad food choices. Aim for seven to nine hours of sleep a night, and take a nap every now and then. A few tips for improving sleep are:

• Eating foods that are high in tryptophan, such as chicken, beef, or almonds, as it helps your body produce serotonin, which helps you relax at night and go to sleep. Eat these foods at dinner, so that they can have the necessary effect at bedtime.
• Avoid exposure to blue LED light from screens at least 30 minutes before you go to sleep, as blue light exposure reduces the amount of melatonin, the sleep hormone, that your body produces.
• Practice time-restricted eating, where you limit your eating window to at least 12 hours a day, and eat at similar times. This helps to balance your circadian rhythm, which is your body’s natural sleep and waking-up cycle.

Try Time-Restricted Eating or Intermittent Fasting

Fasting for weight loss is perhaps something you did not expect to see on this list of fat loss tips. Reducing your daily eating window is a great way to lose weight, as it helps decrease the amount of time you have in a day in which you can eat. Time-restricted eating is when you only eat within a nine- to twelve-hour window, and intermittent fasting starts when you eat within an eight-hour window and fast for at least sixteen hours. Eating less often is not the only benefit of fasting. When we fast, our bodies go into a state of autophagy, which is the body’s natural cell-recycling system.

Autophagy stimulates lipolysis, which is the process of fat burning, and also speeds up cell regeneration, which can help prevent or reduce loose skin after weight loss. Fasting also stimulates the release of the human growth hormone (HGH), which helps improve body composition by encouraging fat loss and muscle growth.

Try Products from the Herbex Slimmers and Attack the Fat Ranges

At Herbex, we have an incredible selection of herbal products that are all designed to help you lose weight and unwanted fat. By following the fat-loss tips discussed above, paired with products like the ones found in our Herbex Slimmers and Attack the Fat ranges, you can start to lose weight, and be a lot closer to your goal by the time the summer holidays arrive. You can buy Herbex products at any Clicks, Dischem, or major retailer nationwide, or online at Takealot.com.