Fat-Burning Diet and Nutrition Guide

percent less bodyfat than those who never drank tea.
How we use tea:S A N ’s Tight supplement that we use
before training contains green-tea extract. Steve also has green
tea most nights after dinner. He says it helps kill the urge to eat
b e f o re bedtime (and you burn calories when you run to the
bathroom to pee in the middle of the night).
8) Wa t e r.Your muscles are about 70 percent water, but
that’s not the reason this substance is considered an anabolic
accelerator and fat burn e r. Drinking more water isn’t going to
f o rce your muscles to hold more and thus become larg e r,
although sufficient carb intake will help them hold as much
water as possible and retain a full look. For maximum muscle
growth and fat loss to occur, all of your bodily systems must be
functioning at optimal levels, and water is one way to keep
things flowing along at a healthy pace. It helps flush poisons
from your system and also enhances blood flow, which means
that nutrients reach your recovering muscles more efficiently.
Keep in mind that bodyfat is where many toxins are stored.
When you start burning fat, your body has more toxins to deal
with, and water makes removal of that waste more eff i c i e n t.
Without enough water your body may force the toxins back into
fat storage, which can slow the fat-burning pro c e s s — y o u r
body needs the fat to hold the toxins. Incidentally, alcohol is a
toxin, so drinking it on a regular basis can also hamper the fat-
burning process, not to mention the fact that alcohol contains
excess, empty calories that can blunt anabolic hormone activity
(it’s been shown to suppress testosterone).
Here’s a big bonus: Water also ramps up your metabolism.
R e s e a rc he rs conducte d a study to test its therm o g e n i c
effects—that is, its conversion of fat calories into heat. Seven
men and seven women, with an average age of 27, drank 500
milliliters, or about half a quart, of water. That caused a
metabolic increase of 30 percent over resting levels. The
increase occurred within 10 minutes, reaching a maximum 30
to 40 minutes after the subjects drank the water. It lasted for
m o re than an hour, and it led the authors to suggest that