While most exercises can help you lose weight by merely allowing you to burn calories, such as walking, running, cycling, swimming or jogging, other exercises help you boost your weight loss efforts by helping you keep burning calories and target fat even after the workout is complete.

Pull-ups

As this exercise makes you use all the muscles in the body, particularly in the core, back, and arms, it helps you burn more fat. These exercises can be particularly difficult for beginners, but it’ll get easier with practice. And remember that even the assisted ones can help burn calories.

Push-ups

This exercise also engages your core and legs, and helps you burn fat quickly. Just like pull-ups, push-ups are particularly difficult for beginners, but unlike the former, you can do push-ups from your knees or from your feet as you push off a wall or table, which also helps you burn calories and strengthen your muscles. Once you’ve mastered the modified version of the push-ups, you can use objects that are closer to the ground until you can push yourself off the floor.

Swimming

If it’s done well, swimming is a great weight to burn calories and practice resistance-training, particularly for people who suffer from painful joints. As you push against the water in order to move, you are exercising your muscles and burning calories.

Running

This is one of the best cardio exercises for weight loss. If you want to see the effects more quickly, try running outside rather than on a treadmill - this will engage more muscles as you push yourself forward. Running uphill, however, is the most effective form of this exercise as it helps you strengthen your legs and abdominals more than when you run on a flat surface.

Kettlebell swings

This is one of the most effective exercises to target fat as you’ll use your glutes, hips and quads to propel the kettlebell upwards, while you exercise your abs which will help you keep your core stable. The way to do this exercise correctly is by bending your hips and holding a kettlebell with both hands at arms’ length in front of you. Squeeze your glutes, move your hips forward, and power the kettlebell upwards.

Skipping

Whether it’s part of a warm-up or programmed into your main exercise routine, skipping can be a full-body workout that benefits your overall fitness. This comprehensive workout requires you to use your shoulders and arms to turn the rope at a quick pace, at the same time your legs and calves will be propelling your body upwards, and your core and abs remain engaged. Some of its benefits include cardiovascular fitness, leg strength, stamina, balance, flexibility, endurance, and coordination.

Burpees

Whether you use programme it into your strength training or aerobic routine, Burpee is a full-body exercise that can rev your metabolism as much as a 30-second sprint and works your arms, back, chest, core, glutes and legs. All of these translates into burning more calories, improving your cardiovascular fitness, while testing your balance and coordination. This is one of the reasons burpees are usually integrated into the high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Another advantage of this exercise is that you can enjoy all of its benefits without the need of a machine; you can do it anywhere, anytime.

Dumbbell Goblet Squat

Although the traditional squat is one of the most basic exercises for building lower body strength and preventing injuries, due to the load’s position, it can put you at risk for a back injury. A dumbbell goblet squat, however, removes that tension and it targets the quads and glutes. This is because, while a traditional squat place the tension on your upper and lower back, a dumbbell goblet squat brings the load to the front as a counterbalance. The position of the load also makes your core work harder, and it will encourage your core, shoulders, glutes, legs and core to work. It also helps improve your mobility. As it engages many muscles, it’s great for burning calories and fat.

Rowing

Although most gym-goers are likely to give the rowing machine a miss, some claim that each stroke on the machine uses 85 percent of your muscles across the nine major muscle groups. Apart from being a full-body workout, it will also spike your heartrate, blast fat, and burn about 150 calories in just 15 minutes. For best results, avoid long stints in the seat, and try, instead, sharp intervals sessions.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is all the rage these days. High intensity interval training during COVID pandemic is safe and effective in improving physical function and quality of life. One of the reasons this is so is because it helps burn more calories and blast fat faster than other exercises. In truth, these exercises are efficient and effective, which means you'll need less time to achieve the same results you would achieve with traditional exercises. Basically, HIIT helps you burn large amounts of calories in a short amount of time.

But what is HIIT? It stands for High Intensity Interval Training, and it translates into short, intense bursts of close to maximum effort that can last from 10 seconds to 3 minutes in an exercise routine. These intervals are periodically repeated during the exercise and its intensity can vary depending on the workout. Just as well, some of these routines can use different muscles of the body, while there are also comprehensive routines that target every muscle.

To feel the greatest benefits of this training, exercises should be performed at a high intensity for around 30 seconds or less followed by a period of rest, and repetitions. To make the most of your workout session, it should be preceded by a five- to seven-minute warm-up period to get your heart rate up. Here are some of the reasons why you can spend less time exercising with high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and still get great results:

You burn calories during and after the workout. Due to something called the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), you will not only burn calories during the workout, but you will also burn calories during the hours that follow the workout because your body will need to replace energy and repair muscle proteins which were damaged during the workout. Therefore, HIIT training works in two ways, it helps you use the body's reserves of energy during the workout, and it speeds up your metabolism rate and helps you burn calories after exercise.

It can help you lose fat. As this exercise requires an effort from your body, it targets fat stores for the energy during and after the exercise. During the exercise, it will metabolize fat for fuel, and after the exercise, it will make use of fat stores to restore to its normal resting state and repair damaged muscle proteins.

HIIT can help improve oxygen consumption. Exercise increases your oxygen expenditure during and after the workout. As your body burns 5 calories per liter of oxygen consumed, HIIT increases your caloric expenditure simply by increasing the amount of oxygen you consume. This is more so as short intervals of extremely high-intensity training involving a lot of muscle mass require vast amounts of oxygen during and after the exercise.

HIIT improves metabolic waste removal. While high-intensity training produces a great amount of metabolic waste, such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, the recovery interval helps to remove these waste products. HIIT's metabolic waste removal aims at helping the muscles perform the next high-intensity exercise. Therefore, this type of workout trains your body to cope with and swiftly recover from high-intensity exercise.

Health benefits. HIIT can help reduce blood pressure and sugar, and helps to keep a healthy heart. While normal training can make it hard to push yourself into an anaerobic state where you find yourself out of breath and your heart starts beating out of your chest, HIIT helps you push yourself to that level thanks to the rest interval that follows the heart pounding point. This process keeps your blood flowing through your body and keeps your heart healthy.

Simple. Since HIIT is based on raising your heart rate rather than toning your muscles, it doesn't require machines, and it's versatile. All you need is an open space and a timer since the purpose of the exercise is to get your heart rate up quickly. Since they only require a short amount of time, you can easily combine HIIT training with other fitness regimes. Therefore, it's efficient and effective.

Some of the HIIT exercises that are easy to incorporate into a fitness routine are mountain climbers, star jumps, lunges, jumping squats, skipping, burpees, high knees, sprints, press ups, and planks.

As a result, HIIT is a way to work out smarter. It's recommended for beginners to see results fast, lose weight and build endurance.

Dry body brushing is said to invigorate the body, builds course and blood stream, and animates waste from the lymphatic framework to smooth skin's surface, clear away chips and dry fixes, and even out irregularities and knocks, including cellulite. Well what else can we do stuck in the bathroom for 6 months corona lockdown... OMG.

So, you've mastered your diet, become a lycra-clad goddess at the gym, drink your own bodyweight in water every day and take enough vitamins and supplements that your immune system laughs in the face of corona / flu season. Errr or… you are reaching for the third slice of pizza, haven't removed your running shoes from their box since you bought them, drink your body weight in carbonated soda plus alcohol and you've taken a multivitamin before. Accidentally.

Either way, read on, as body brushing will serve either those looking for the cherry on top of their already healthy lifestyle, or those who are looking for an immediate benefit which will perhaps encourage a healthier lifestyle. Or perhaps not. It will give good results either way.

So what the heck is body brushing? Body brushing is the therapeutic routine of taking a soft-bristled dry brush and gently brushing the skin in swift strokes towards the heart. The reason why we always brush in the direction of the heart is because the main benefits of body brushing are happening underneath the skin: increasing circulation.

Whilst the process may be likened to that of brushing a dog or a cat to maintain their fur, and if you feel slightly silly to start with, that's okay. Instead of removing knots, insects, spores, and many other weird and wonderful things, as you would with domestic pets, you are encouraging the blood vessels underneath the skin to be stimulated and a greater flow of blood to pass through them. This accelerates the process of breaking down fat cells, and even improves the appearance of cellulite, along with removing lingering toxins.

Nothing can compare to a healthy diet and exercise for weight maintenance, but body brushing is a fantastic way to add a beautiful glow to your skin, whatever your fitness level. An added bonus is that it also exfoliates the top layer of your skin by removing the dead skin cells and clearing the way for the newer, healthier skin to be on display instead.

The best time to body brush is before you shower. Your skin will not be over sensitive from the moisture and it's a great chance to wash away any dead cells that may remain on the surface. Work from the bottom to the top and always follow your circulation pattern so that whatever residue that is being cleared out by your blood is encouraged to move in the same direction.

Be sure to moisturise after your shower to protect the newer skin, and of course to really bring out that new glow.

A slow metabolism is very common among people past their teenage years and it can make it really difficult to lose weight and extremely easy to gain weight. Besides, a slow metabolism can you tire out easily so you don't enjoy life to the fullest. Fortunately, you can easily boost your metabolism naturally and you can find easy ways to do this below:

1. Early morning intense exercise: a short burst of intense exercise after just waking up is an excellent way to speed up your metabolism. And the best part is that you only need five minutes of intense exercise. Either running in place, jumping jacks or lunges will do trick. Also, if you have a stair master or a jogging machine, that is perfect as well. Get your heart rate up for five minutes and cool down for two minutes.

2. Drink lots of water: drinking more than 2 litres of water a day will not only cleanse your body but it will also boost your metabolism because the metabolic process needs water for fuel it. To get the best results, drink alkaline water.

3. Eat more spicy foods: Indian cuisine had it right... Hot spices like curry, cayenne pepper, black pepper, cumin, and turmeric all help the body speed up your metabolism. There are also other hot spices that won't strike you as such but they have that effect on the body. These include cinnamon, cardamon, ginger and nutmeg. These spices can be added to different dishes, including soups, stir-fries, casseroles, among others. A great combination is cinnamon an coffee. Just add it before you brew it.

4. Take care of your thyroid. This gland needs certain minerals such as selenium, zinc, copper, and iodine to work efficiently. You can get such minerals from seafoods and nuts.

5. Don't skip breakfast. Many people skip this very important meal of the day due to their fast-paced lifestyle or their lack of appetite when they wake up. However, your metabolism needs a healthy breakfast to perform efficiently during the day. That is why it is a good idea to have some healthy protein like eggs and fruit bursting with antioxidants like blueberries and strawberries in the morning.

6. Eat less late in the day. It is not recommended to have a big meal for dinner nor snacking at night before bedtime if you want to speed up your metabolism. Follow the pyramid diet: eat more earlier in the day and less at dinner.

7. Get your omega-3's. Eating great amounts of food rich in omega-3 fatty acids such as salmon, herring and tuna can help boost your metabolism since omega-3s balance blood sugar and reduce inflammation, helping to regulate metabolism. They may also reduce resistance to the hormone leptin, which researchers have linked to how fast fat is burned.

8. Make some muscles. This rule is not only for body builders, but for everyone. In fact, muscle uses more energy than fat. After months of strength-training, your resting metabolism will burn more calories.