Using the cold effect:

• Consuming 2 glasses of ice-water immediately on waking on an empty stomach will not only burns up 17 calories for warming up the water to body temperature but will also increase your body’s resting metabolic rate by up to 20-30 percent peaking at 40-60 mins post consumption. – Take your morning tea or any medicinal decoction 20 mins after the ice water. If you have to have chilled water or drinks during the day, then sip it, to allow it to warm a little in your mouth. (See – ‘Need for Proper Hydration’).
• Take 5-10 mins cold showers 20 to 30 minutes before breakfast and/or before bed. Use hot water for 1-2 mins over entire body, then turn the shower to pure cold (cold would mean temperature of around 10⁰ to 15⁰ C) and focus the water on your lower neck and upper back for 1-3 mins. Then soap up and rinse your body fully as normal. If you are impatient and can tolerate more – take a 20 min bath that induces shivering.

Place an ice-pack on the back of the neck and / or upper trapezium area for 20-30 mins, preferably in the evening when insulin sensitively is lowest. Place a towel on the sofa and lean back on it with the ice-pack on you as above as you watch TV or read. You may also place an ice-cube wrapped in a cloth at the mid-point of the back of your neck.

• Short term exposure to cold (30 mins) leads to fatty acid release to provide fuel for heat production through shivering. This shivering could be sufficient to recruit GLUT-4 receptors to the surface of muscle cells, contributing to increased lean muscle
• Even at shorter durations, cold exposure with shivering could increase adiponectin levels and glucose uptake by muscle tissue. This effect persists long after the cold exposure ends.
• In the absence of shivering, it is still possible to ‘capitalize’ on ‘fat-burning’ fat through the stimulation of BAT thermo generics. Under water exercises also help increase more lean muscle tissue than land-based exercises.

Note:

• Not germane to fat loss, but cold showers are an effective treatment for depression. Shower at 10⁰ to 15⁰C for 2-3 mins, preceded by a 5 min gradual adaptation to make the procedure less shocking.
• Also, though again not germane to fat loss, it will help to remember that comparing the minimum caloric requirement of those living in countries with a cold climate to those living in a warm or hot climate, leads to a mistaken assumption of malnutrition in warm climates, as such a direct comparison does not take into account the many calories required in the cold climates just to maintain body temperature.

Scientists at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, discovered that the lungs are the primary organ for weight loss. When exercise causes the breakdown of fat into its constituent parts by exertion, chemical bonds are broken, a process which releases heat and fuel to power muscles. But the atoms remain, the carbon in the fat (84 percent) gets converted into CO₂ which then leaves the body via the lungs through exhalation. The balance, hydrogen (16 percent) gets converted into water which is excreted through body fluids.

• As Ruben Meerman notes: Fat – C55 H104 O₆ —> 55CO₂+52H₂0 + energy (that photosynthesis takes from the Sun and incorporates into the foods).

Just breathing only leads to a steady but only a little loss of fat as the amount of oxygen is limited. Trying to breathe rapidly and forcefully soon causes only hyperventilation leading to dizziness, palpitation and loss of consciousness. Forceful breathing is good only when it is the response to the body’s demand for oxygen caused by exercising which encourages the fat out of the cells and only then oxidizes it.

Nasal breathing increases CO₂ exhalation compared to mouth breathing, as it stimulates the lower lobes of the lungs and hence should be the preferred manner of breathing.

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