Diet & Fitness 

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Six slim-down strategies

Liz Neporent runs through the six smartest strategies for making the best of your workout time

Using your workout time more efficiently can often make the difference between a successful weight loss regimen and one that goes nowhere. From bouncing up and down on a pogo stick to sneaky karaoke sessions, use these strategies to make it count:

Walk the walk
It may not burn calories that quickly, but slow and steady is the way to go for a lot of us. For every mile you walk you'll burn about 100 calories, nearly the same as you would if you covered the same distance at a run. True, you'd go further faster if you picked up the pace, but you're also likely to tire sooner and get injured more often.

Put a little bustle in your muscle
Increasing your workout intensity a couple of times a week builds muscles, burns more calories and boosts your metabolism. If you're a walker, warm up first and then do six or more cycles of two minutes of running or fast walking, alternated with two minutes of moderately paced walking. Finish up with a cool down. You can apply this type of workout pattern to swimming, cycling, rollerblading or any other type of exercise activity. Overdoing a high-intensity workout invites injury and burnout, so limit this strategy to two workouts a week at the most.

Break it up
The number one excuse for not working out: no time. However, this reason becomes obsolete if you split up your workout time into two, three or even four mini-workouts daily. Research shows you?ll burn the same amount of calories whether you do your workout all at once or in bits and pieces. For instance, you can do a brisk ten-minute walk before work, climb your office stairs for ten minutes at lunchtime and dance to your favourite music for ten minutes while you're cooking your dinner.

Get sneaky
Slipping in an activity that you might not necessarily consider to be 'exercise' can help rack up your daily calorie burn total. Don't believe it? Some examples: window-shopping for ten minutes burns 35 calories; a quick run through your garden to pull weeds burns 60 calories; lugging your toddler around the house for five minutes burns 40 calories; foregoing an escalator and walking up one flight of stairs burns 16 calories; and singing 'We Are the World' at a karaoke bar burns off 20 calories. You get the idea.

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