Proven Ways to Burn Fat While You’re At Rest.

We could all do with all the help we can when it comes to burning fat. But what if you could lose a few pounds while you’re enjoying snooze time? The good news is that you can. Today we’re sharing 7 science-backed ways to burn fat while sleeping.

And not just during your shuteye time. You could burn hundreds of extra calories per day while even sitting in a chair. Think about how much easier it would be to burn fat and stay lean. How much less time you would have to spend working out at the gym. How much bigger and more filling your meals could be on a daily basis.

This is not an fantasy and is entirely possible actually. For most people it’s probably the most efficient way they could burn fat while sleeping perhaps because of a physical condition that would not allow them to work out as much.

To burn fat belly fat while sleeping, you simply boost your metabolism or more specifically their resting metabolic rate.

This fat loss method is one of the biggest and most overlooked advantages that gives some people the ability to eat more food have more cheat days and simply enjoy life while staying lean.

With that said here are the seven powerful science-backed ways to boost your metabolism allowing you to burn hundreds of extra calories per day without any extra effort – while sleeping.

How to Burn Fat While Sleeping

#1. Optimize your thyroid function.

So the very first way to burn fat while sleeping is to optimize your thyroid function. That might sound quite scientific to you but it’s really simple. This one alone can boost your metabolism by between 500 to 1000 extra calories per day.

If you currently have certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies, it will prevent your thyroid from operating at maximum capacity. Your thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland that’s located in the front of your neck right below your Adam’s apple.

Research has proved a long time ago that your thyroid hormones have a major impact on your metabolic rate. Now out of all the vitamins and minerals out there, it’s especially important to get enough iodine. Your thyroid gland uses iodine to make thyroid hormones.

The big problem is that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 35% of the world’s population isn’t getting enough iodine on a daily basis. Not getting enough iodine in your diet can lead to very low levels of thyroid hormones being produced.

This drastically slows down your resting metabolism.

Most people primarily get iodine from salt. But sea salt doesn’t score very high in iodine and because of this it’s not very effective at helping you reach your daily requirements. This is an even bigger issue because there’s been a big push within the health and fitness industry towards using sea salt over regular table salt.

It seems as if sea salt has some kind of magical property that makes it that much better and healthier for you but the truth is that both sea salt and table salt have the same basic nutritional values and very similar amounts of sodium per gram. So for most people it’s a good idea to replace regular saw or even sea salt with iodized salt to make sure that you’re getting proper levels of iodine in your diet.

For those of you that are all about sea salt the good news is that there are brands that offer iodized sea salt which would be just as effective at maintaining optimal iodine levels.

Two other very important minerals for thyroid function are zinc and selenium. They have a role in the conversion of the thyroid hormone T4 into its active form T3. Specifically a zinc deficiency can have a very negative effect.

This was observed in one case study that showed that zinc supplementation could boost T3 levels and metabolism. One of the zinc deficient people in the study boosted their resting metabolism by an extra 527 calories per day after just 2 months of zinc supplementation. After four months it went up by a whopping 992 calories per day.

Even though this study was very small, this is a huge change and zinc deficiencies are not quite as uncommon as you might think. This is especially amongst athletic and active people because exercising increases your body’s demand for zinc and you also lose zinc through sweat.

So taking a zinc supplement can be a good idea to make sure that your thyroid is functioning optimally. This will ensure that your metabolism is running at top speed.

#2. Change your cooking oil.

Another thing that you could do to boost your metabolism to help you burn fat while sleeping is to switch from regular cooking oils to MCTs (Medium Chain Triglycerides) that are specifically high in lauric acid. One perfect example of this is coconut oil.

When comparing MCTs like coconut oil to LCT’s (Long Chain Triglycerides) which are found in butter, it seems that MCTs can help improve metabolism to a greater extent. One study in particular found that switching to MCTs led to a 5% boost and resting metabolic rate.

Another study showed that this boost could last for over six hours. On top of that a meta-analysis on a group of randomized controlled trials concluded that replacing LCTs with MCTs can help people lose weight and body fat without negatively affecting things like your cholesterol.

In fact when compared to other facts MCTs with lauric acid helped elevate levels of HDL (High-Density Lipoprotein) which is considered the good cholesterol. They also decrease the risk of heart disease.

However you need to keep in mind that the key word in all of this is to replace. You shouldn’t just increase your consumption of mediums fats like coconut oil but instead replace some of the other sources of fat that you’re already using. Otherwise just adding in more fat to your diet will cost you more calories than it’ll actually save you.

#3. Eat enough protein.

The next easy way to drastically increase your metabolism so that you can burn more fat while sleeping or resting is to eat enough protein. Here’s why. Out of the three macronutrients which are protein, carbs and fats, protein is by far the best at increasing your metabolism.

It does that in two major ways. First it has a high thermic effect of food which is also known as diet induced thermogenesis (DIT). This means that the amount of energy it takes for your body to digest, process and store protein is much higher when compared to other nutrients.

In a 2014 review published in the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, researchers concluded that 15-30 percent of the calories taken in from eating protein are used right back up during the digestion process. That same study found that carbs required much less at around 5-10 percent while fats were at the lowest hovering around 0-3 percent.

What does this mean when all you want to do know how to burn fat while sleeping? This means that for every hundred calories of protein that you eat, it’ll take your body anywhere from 15-30 calories just to digest, process and store that protein source.

This amount of calories may not sound like much but if you’re eating between 0.8 to 1.0 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, for most people that would end up burning anywhere between a hundred to 250 extra calories per day. You may need to read that again to understand it.

The second thing that protein does for your metabolism is it helps you build muscle. Needless to say it prevents you from losing muscle while you get leaner. This is something that has been shown in countless studies and maintaining more muscle is actually our next tip on burning fat in your sleep. (1), (2), (3), (4). Please refer to this article for more information on foods that help you build more muscle.

#4. Maintain more muscle

This does not mean you should go to the gym and get shredded. If you can that’s great. To increase your metabolism it used to be believed that one pound of muscle would burn anywhere from 30 to 50 calories per day. However, muscle isn’t quite as metabolically active as what some people have claimed in the past

According to newer studies and updated research, each pound of muscle burns about 68 calories per day. While this isn’t a huge amount there are other benefits that come from having more muscle on your body that lead to a much bigger total impact on the way that your body uses energy at rest.

First it leads to improve the insulin sensitivity. This allows your body to use glucose more efficiently. Insulin resistance on the other hand will make it almost impossible to burn food for energy. We definitely want to have a higher insulin sensitivity by developing our muscles.

The other thing is that you’ll consistently deplete those glycogen stores. This is the type of workouts that are required to build muscle. This will allow you to now refill those glycogen stores in your muscles when you eat carbohydrates rather than storing those carbohydrates as fat.

On top of that it’ll also increase and improve your overall glycogen storage capacity. This again allowing you to take in more carbohydrates in the form of glucose into your muscle cells rather than into your fat cells.

This is why studies have shown that bodybuilders can have a 14% higher metabolism than similar control groups without the extra muscle mass. Once you add all the effects of eating more protein and building more muscle together, you can see that muscle is very important for an improved metabolic rate.

#5. Stay hydrated throughout the day.

I know you have already heard this from every health fitness related blog but it’s because it’s true. To burn fat while sitting or sleeping, staying hydrated throughout the day with water is one best way to do it. Its effect on your metabolism is quite interesting.

One study showed that drinking 500 milliliters of water or a little more than two cups, increase the metabolic rate by 30% for about 30 to 40 minutes. To save you the time from having to do the math, that represents about an extra 24 calories burnt just by drinking two cups of water.

Now again this may not sound like a lot but if you do this multiple times a day the amount of belly fat lost starts to add up. On top of that you drink cold water instead of regular water you would burn a hundred or more extra calories per day.

This is because two separate studies both showed an increase by up to 25% in resting metabolic rate for an hour after drinking cold water. Cold water specifically is believed to be beneficial because it forces your body to burn more calories to produce heat. (1)

Now with that said it’s important for me to mention as I mentioned before in previous articles that you’re not going to magically burn fat and lose weight by just drinking more water. You will have to maintain a good diet as well.

But by only drinking water not only will it reduce the amount of calories that you take in per day, but it could also help you burn an extra 100 calories or more per day.

#6. Eat more chili peppers

Another thing you can do to increase your metabolism to burn fat while sleeping or resting is eat chili peppers and spicy food. In general there’s something known as capsaicin. That’s found in chili peppers. This substance is what causes an increase in metabolism by activating brown adipose tissue or fat.

Brown fat appears to have the ability of being able to use regular body fat as fuel to generate heat. Another benefit of capsaicin is that evidence shows that it can promote fat oxidation and support your metabolism while restricting calories.

So it can be particularly beneficial to eat spicy food with chili peppers while you’re on a diet to prevent or at least limit metabolic slowdown. Chili pepper is one food that causes your body to burns fat while sleeping.

Finally as an extra benefit, capsaicin can also help you feel fuller. So if you have something spicy like chili peppers with dinner, this can reduce your desire to eat after dinner which will prevent nighttime eating and support both your sleep quality and fat loss.

#7. Ice baths and cold showers

Now the last scientifically proven way to increase your metabolism that I want to talk about is cold exposure ice baths and cold showers. Specifically cold showers are believed by many people to highly increase your metabolic rate.

However the effects aren’t quite as drastic as what most people said. One of the major reasons why people think that taking a cold shower as ways to burn fat while sleeping is so effective is because proponents of cold showers reported based on specific people within studies rather than the results of the entire study.

For example one study found that when healthy men underwent two hours of cold exposure at 19 degrees Celsius or 66 degrees Fahrenheit some of them increase their energy expenditure by hundreds of calories. Meanwhile at the same time others in the study did not have such a large spike in their metabolic rate.

This is a common reoccurring theme when it comes to research on the effects of cold showers and ice baths. In another study one of the men exposed to the cold temperatures burnt an extra 400 calories per day.

This is obviously something that we would all love to have just by taking a cold shower. However, in that same study the average increase in metabolic rate across all the subjects was only 75 calories which I don’t think anyone would complain about.

It’s not quite as significant as what some people believe about the metabolic boosting effects of cold exposure. However, it does seem true that everyone will burn at least some more calories when their body is cold because cold exposure can once again activate your brown fat.

A quick one-minute cold shower probably will not do all that much. However an ice bath would be much colder and now would allow you to burn fat much faster.

On the other side of the spectrum, you can also just drop the room temperature to 66 degrees and keep it there all day to burn more calories over a longer time span.

Just just keep in mind that if you’re putting on sweatpants and a sweatshirt to tolerate the lower temperature it’ll probably not have any kind of effect on your metabolic rate.

Conclusion

These are scientifically proven ways to burn fat while sleeping that our research team found. Being able to to burn an extra couple hundred calories per day while sleeping or at rest can truly be very beneficial for faster fat loss and easier weight maintenance.

Losing belly fat and building more muscle requires a committed, consistent way of living. But it must something you enjoy doing else in the long run you will quit. Make your meals tasty. If you’re following a diet that’s very restrictive on what you can and cannot eat, naturally you will deprived and wouldn’t be able to follow through.

Combine two or more of the 7 ways of to burn fat while sleeping that we’ve discussed here with a healthy lifestyle and it will help you achieve your fat and weight loss goals. It has done it for me. All the best!