The idea of getting sweaty, tired, and out of breath while not immediately losing three pounds is very offensive, especially when we’re making an effort to do the whole gym thing. Don’t put us down for cardio. However, you don’t need to sweat it out amongst grunting jocks in the gym to hit your cardio goals. You don’t even need to start waking up at 4am like the other psychopaths jogging around your neighborhood. Incorporating more cardio into your day can build muscle, burn fat, and lead you to a more toned and #blessed life, so walking, dancing, and even vacuuming are all great ways to seek the path of the Insta model. Here are some easy ways to incorporate cardio into your day.
1. Stairs
This is probs the easiest one to do for those of us working in soulless corporate buildings with multiple floors. According to scientists, you’ll also burn more calories if you take one step at a time, so tell your boss it wasn’t the Starbucks that made you late, it was your dedication to health and fitness.
2. Gossip While Walking Around The Block
Walking is good, but walking while your mouth is running is even better. If you’re trying to get up and move around, walking for 15 minutes can burn about 66 calories, but walking while talking burns more since you’re taking more breath to multitask and rip apart Janet’s horrendous outfit. Sh*t, you could even become a real boss b*tch and host walking meetings to see who the most athletic person in your department is.
3. Hit The Clerb
Gross, but it’s a great workout. If you aren’t slamming 1,000 calorie piña coladas for four hours and are, instead, sticking to vodka sodas or just, like, water (EW), going to the club and dancing is a great way to do cardio without actually thinking about the fact that you’re doing cardio. Dancing for 30 minutes can burn as much as 150 calories. So, it may be worth it to deal with douchebags and frat bros trying to hit on you in a dark, loud room instead of a brightly lit, upsettingly quiet, and sweaty room.
4. Jump Rope
Hearken back to the olden times in PE class when jumping rope was for cool kids and your lame ass couldn’t keep up. Regain your school-age confidence and buy a jump rope for incredibly easy cardio you can do in your office or in front of the TV at home. Jumping rope works your legs, improves overall conditioning, and is obvi a great way to incorporate cardio into your life without having to step foot in a gym.
5. Go Shopping
Sounds cray, is true. Carrying a lightly loaded basket of clothes or groceries for only five minutes will burn 44 calories, according to Greatist. That sounds like a great excuse to hit up Target on my lunch break, buy a dress, AND get some food shopping done. This must be what adulthood feels like.
6. Vacuum
If you’re a slob and need to clean your house or apartment, you can kill two pounds birds with one stone. About 30 minutes of housework—i.e. dusting, vacuuming, and wiping down surfaces—can add up to about 98 calories. That’s like, one vodka soda or two Oreos. Obviously, you need to be going pretty hard on the vacuuming or dusting for it to be cardio levels, but just blast some Cardi B and rage clean until you feel yourself working up a sweat.
7. Park In The Back
Next time you’re heading anywhere (work, school, Target, the clerb), park as far off as you can (within reason and without putting yourself in some kind of danger). You’ll get a little extra distance in your day and may even work yourself up to cardio if you’re dealing with hills. If you’re really in the mood to up the ante, ride your bike to your destination or walk the whole way if you’re doing that city living thing.
Images: Lindsay Henwood / Unspash; Giphy (3)
1. Limit (Don’t Leave Out) Carbs
2. Eat Small Frequent Meals
3. Know Your Macros (and Calories)
4. Whole Ingredients
5. Limit Alcohol
Thanksgiving can be one huge blur of red wine, unresolved tension from last year’s political debate, and too many slices of your mom’s pumpkin pie. I mean, we don’t blame you for eating your feelings. Between all the preparing, forced family time, awkward personal questions, and sampling every dish before it hits the table, the holiday can be pretty exhausting. Nothing’s stopping you from eating your Thanksgiving meal like you’re preparing for a nuclear apocalypse (not a bad idea considering the way things are going for our country rn), and we get it. However, if you want to burn a few extra calories to get your body ready for all your fav dishes, we’ve found a few ways that don’t consist of skinny teas or any other Instagram diet hacks. Here are some scientifically proven ways to burn calories so you can go ham at Thanksgiving dinner:
1. Drink Lemon Water In The Morning
Remember when we used to take gummy bear vitamins just because we were told they were good for us? That’s kind of like what lemon water is today. Basically every nutritionist and health guru in LA swears by a glass of hot water with lemon in the morning, so we believe that it does something for us. Drinking lemon water first thing in the morning has been proven to kickstart your digestive system and speed up your metabolism, so it will help you burn more calories throughout the day. Drink a huge cup of lemon water on the morning of Thanksgiving and you’ll feel better all day even when stuffing your face with pumpkin pie. Like, an extra slice is fine because I drank lemon water, right??
2. Get Off The Couch And Help Out
Being home for Thanksgiving is basically an excuse to lay around all day and try to drink enough wine to deal with your annoying second cousins, but if you actually do something to help out, you’ll end up burning calories just by being *somewhat* helpful. Help carry the groceries inside, cut the vegetables, or take the dog on a walk. I know laziness is inevitable when you’re home and don’t have any responsibilities, but any sort of moving around helps keep you active. I’m not saying carrying a case of water bottles inside the house from the driveway is gonna make you lose three pounds, but keeping your body active will prevent your metabolism from slowing down throughout the day, and we can honestly use any help we can get at this point.
3. Get In A Quick HIIT Workout
There’s no better excuse to escape family time than your physical health. It doesn’t matter if you don’t even work out the other 364 days of the year. Thanksgiving is the perfect time to lie to your loved ones about your personal priorities and insist on spending a few minutes by yourself to get in a quick workout. I mean, this is assuming your high school dealer is out of town and your friends are busy with their own families. Either way, HIIT isn’t such a bad last resort, and it’s the most logical way to burn calories when you’re planning on indulging later on. Even a 15-minute interval-based workout can help you burn calories for up to 24 hours afterwards, so put on a sports bra and do the damn thing. We even made a workout routine for you, so what’s your excuse?
4. Drink Cold Water
Thanksgiving can be a great time to catch up on your hydration, considering you don’t remember the last time you actually drank a full water bottle unless you were severely hungover or coming out of some bootcamp class that still gives you PTSD. We already know that staying hydrated keeps you full and clears your skin, but apparently drinking cold water helps your body burn more calories when at rest. When you drink cold water, your body has to work to bring the water up to its own internal temperature, which burns calories without you even realizing. If I were you, I’d start chugging.
5. Add Cinnamon
Luckily for you, cinnamon is kind of a seasonal staple, so it’s probably in a good number of your Thanksgiving desserts already. Cinnamon has been proven to help you burn calories and lose weight because of its regulatory effect on blood sugar levels. Here’s how it works. When your body’s insulin levels increase, it increases the metabolism of glucose, and the cinnamon helps prevent fat from being stored from the high blood sugar. In other words, a scoop of cinnamon can stabilize your blood sugar and prevent your body from holding onto extra fat. Sprinkle some in your coffee or anything else that makes sense to put cinnamon in. It’s Thanksgiving… it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
6. Eat The Brussels Sprouts Side Dish
There’s a ton of amazing food at Thanksgiving, but brussels sprouts are KEY if you want to burn calories while eating. It sounds impossible considering all foods have calories, but eating cruciferous vegetables like brussels sprouts will actually make your body burn calories because it needs to work extra hard to digest the fiber. This applies to veggies like kale and broccoli, too. There’s basically this scientific phenomenon where some foods have a thermal effect, which means your body uses extra energy to digest them. Brussels sprouts are packed with fiber, so your body will literally burn calories while digesting it. Everyone wins.
Memorial Day weekend is in less than three weeks, and while some boring over-achievers have been dieting and hitting the gym since February, we’ve been busy like, eating cheese fries on 4/20 and slurping down margaritas on Cinco de Mayo. The point is, if your body is nowhere near summer ready, you’ve got just under three weeks to get your shit together before it’s time to day drink in a bikini for three days in a row. Here’s how to lose at least three pounds before Memorial Day:
1. Start Paying Attention
Whether you’re still recovering from Coachella or regretting that Unicorn Frap you ordered “just to see how it tastes,” you haven’t been making the best decisions lately, and it’s time to get your head on straight. You don’t get a good body by mindlessly snacking while watching 13 Reasons Why or by eating Matzah pizza three weeks after Passover. You get it by paying attention to what the fuck you’re eating, so start making good decisions.
2. Choose Whole Foods
We’re not talking about the grocery store, but I guess that works too. When you’re trying to lose weight, whole foods are your best friend. It’s not the 100-calorie snack pack or the sugar-free protein bar that promises to help you lose weight that will get the job done. You don’t need to go on some insane diet, but try eating REAL food, like vegetables, fruit, chicken, and eggs. You know, shit that can be found naturally in nature. Crazy concept, we know.
3. Don’t Buy Anything That Promises To Help
Here’s a little confidence boost for you: YOU’RE the only help you need. Stop buying bullshit SkinnyTeas or online nutrition coaches to tell you what to eat. The health industry is an INDUSTRY, so they’re trying to sell you shit. You probably know more than you think you do, so just listen to basic nutrition rules and try not to be a lazy shit. You don’t need a $95 subscription to Khloé Kardashian’s meal plan to get healthy.
4. Do HIIT Training
If you haven’t visited your gym since November and don’t even remember how to book a SoulCycle bike anymore, it’s fine. Everyone gets lazy and falls off the bike/wagon, but getting back on is the part that counts, so start now. HIIT, aka High Intensity Interval Training, is the fastest, most effective way to burn fat in a small period of time. Think like, 10 minute workouts—we conveniently already made one for you here. (We’re like, such a good friend.) If you go hard enough during each interval, your body will actually continue to burn calories later in the day, so you’ll basically be a fat-burning machine for the next few weeks.
5. Don’t Eat Late At Night
It’s hasn’t actually been scientifically proven that you gain weight from eating later at night, but it’s definitely not the healthiest thing for you. Going to bed feeling full AF will just make you wake up feeling bloated and not skinny, so eat earlier and have a little snack later if you must. Sorry if it makes you a loser for saying no to a late-night dinner at Catch, but nothing good can come of eating a spicy tuna crispy rice roll at 11pm.
6. Prioritize Breakfast
On the same theme of not eating late, you should actually be filling up on calories earlier in the day to prevent snacking and bad eating decisions later on. By having a legitimate breakfast in the morning, your body will fill up with enough fuel to get you through the day, so you’re not starving yourself to binge later on. I mean, everyone knows that feeling of skipping a meal and then getting home and going HAM with whatever the fuck is in your pantry. Have a real breakfast. And just to be clear, coffee with a splash of milk isn’t breakfast.
7. Choose Your Alcohol Wisely
We’re not telling you not to drink for the next three weeks. I mean, we’re not AA, nor do we live in the land of make believe. Alcohol is probably a staple in your week, so you don’t have to completely cut it out. Like, no one wants to be at happy hour with that girl who can’t order a drink because of her dietary restrictions. Drinking a couple times a week is fine, but make sure you order drinks that aren’t going to kill you, or like, add 60 grams of sugar to your night. Skip anything with syrups or tons of sugar, and instead stick to a simple vodka soda or a classy glass of wine. #Health
