The 12-3-30 TikTok challenge consists of setting a treadmill to a 12 percent incline and walking at three miles per hour for 30 minutes. If your workout goals are to achieve a toned physique while still maintaining muscle growth, experts say it is time to swap running on the treadmill for this challenge, a 30-minute incline walk.
According to fitness experts at Total Shape, this weight-loss technique and challenge demonstrates some impressive, sustainable results among TikTokers. The weight-loss technique doesn’t only help burn more calories but also helps you maintain strength and build muscle while alleviating joint problems.
Besides this challenge, there are other ways to lose weight and burn calories. Below, experts share their top tips for people wanting to lose weight and maintain a strong physique.
1. Cut Back on Sugar and Carbs
Cutting back on sugar and carbs is a key part of a weight-loss journey. Spend time identifying the problematic foods in your life and reading labels on the foods you tend to consume. You’d be surprised at how much sugar foods like canned soup and tomato sauce have in them.
Also, be mindful that many processed foods labeled low or nonfat often replace it with sugar. The easiest and best way to cut hidden calories out of your life is to buy fresh fruit and vegetables instead of canned ones.
However, it is important to not cut sugar and carbs out altogether, as this can do harm and deprive your body of a balanced nutritional intake.
2. Be Smart About Saturated Fat
Saturated fats have a bad reputation these days, but in reality, low-fat items in the grocery stores are the main culprits of weight gain. On the store shelves, animal fats have been traded out for refined sugars and carbohydrates to make up for the lack of taste that occurs when the fat gets taken out.
Cutting out fat from your diet is not the best solution to achieve weight loss. Instead, try to keep a more balanced view towards fats by integrating them into your diet in healthy amounts and keeping your fats non-artificial.
Also, natural animal fats like butter are always better for you than heavily processed items like margarine.
3. Increase your Intake of Fruit and Vegetables
Cutting excess calories doesn’t mean you have to eat less food, and there are many wonderful fruits and vegetables available to help keep you fuller for longer and boost your mood.
Particularly, high fiber fruits and vegetables like raspberries, mangos, and leafy greens keep you full longer because they take your body a long time to digest. Also, any dark-colored vegetables are generally higher in fiber content.
The best way to alter eating habits is to make fruits and vegetables convenient for snacking by storing them in easily accessible portions in your kitchen. Pack combinations like peanut butter and celery for your daily lunch to get in protein with fiber. It is easy to double or triple your day’s plant-based foods intake when you become intentional about it.
4. Try Intermittent Fasting
Regardless of the state of your weight-loss efforts, most people can benefit from a process known as intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting means that you schedule certain periods when you fast and other periods when you eat. By doing this you force the body to make metabolic adjustments and burn through existing adipose tissue, particularly around the midsection, in order to meet your energy needs.
This might seem like a starvation diet at first glance, however, there is an important difference. Intermittent fasting is just that: intermittent. You fast for a pre-set length of time and then you resume your normal healthy eating.
