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Burn Fat Faster
Sometimes, it seems extra pounds just adhere to a man's middle section for no particular reason. Okay, maybe there is a reason, and maybe it's found in that bag of Jimmy's Deep Fried Pork Cracklins'.
Now, there are three options for dealing with your extra adipose accessory. You can work out until you pass out. No fun. You can diet until you drop. Even less fun. Or you can take a few simple, easy steps to boost your metabolism--the rate at which your body burns off calories. If you can trick your inner engine into revving just a little higher, you can indulge just a little more than usual without having to loosen your belt one notch.

Five fat-frying strategies that work:

Exercise in the evening. There's nothing like lying completely motionless for eight hours to really dampen the fat-burning fires. But what if you could burn more calories even in your sleep? New research at the Human Energy Laboratory at Colorado State University shows that exercise, and particularly strength training, not only makes you stronger, it also fires up your body's furnace even hours later when you've settled down for a nap. In the study, when a group of men performed a 90-minute evening workout consisting of exercises that attacked all the major muscle groups, their metabolism was still as much as 10 percent above normal when they woke up the next morning--15 hours later.
Build bigger muscles. About that weight-training plan: Concentrate on making muscles grow if you want to make your bulges shrink. That's because, aside from the surge in metabolic rate you get from a workout, you'll also continue to burn 30 to 50 more calories a day every day for each extra pound of muscle you put on. The reason: Lean body mass takes more energy to sustain than fat does.
To build muscle most efficiently, concentrate on compound exercises, which work large muscle groups, rather than exercises that target individual muscles. Leg presses, bench presses, pulldowns and squats are ideal examples.
Eat early. A big mistake lots of men make is to try to fast their way through most of the day, thinking they're doing their bodies good, then arrive home and tear through the fridge trying to quell their rumbling bellies. Instead, if you eat most of your calories earlier in the day, you'll actually stoke your internal fire to burn hotter, says Pat Harper, M.S., R.D., a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. Another benefit of eating early: You have the entire day, when you're most active, to burn off those calories through normal activity. Studies have shown that overweight people consume 75 percent or more of their calories in the evening, when the body is slowing down and more likely to store fat.
Have yourself a snack. We've been raised to think that snacking is bad. Of course, we were raised to think that sex was bad, too, and that myth turned out to be pretty off base, didn't it? Truth is, snacking is good for you. Keeping your body fueled with small but low-fat snacks throughout the day keeps weight off. Snacks control flab by stabilizing blood-sugar levels, which may cause your body to burn fat more efficiently. Good snacks are rich in complex carbohydrates. We're talking about fruits and vegetables here, not corn chips, of course.
Take a long walk. One of the most effective and pleasant ways to burn fat, say researchers at the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas, is to take regular, brisk walks. While you burn calories faster doing more intense activities, studies show you actually burn proportionally more fat calories when you walk. For a low-intensity walking workout to work, you need to keep with it for a full 30 minutes or more, and you need to keep it regular, at least four to five times per week.

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