Most of us eat from 8am to 8pm, but a study presented at 2016 The Obesity Society Annual Meeting suggests that ending your last meal by 2pm can reduce hunger pangs, as well as help your body burn more fat at night.

However, more research remains to be done to see if this results in weight loss or other health benefits over time.

Having excess calories can lead to your body accumulating white fat. On the other hand, brown fat, another naturally occurring fat that’s more common in people with a low body mass index, helps to burn energy to create body heat.

According to a report in Experimental Physiology, some stress may stimulate more brown fat activity, so remember that not all stress is bad.

Hydrate with green tea before your workout sesh. The brew may improve your endurance during a workout and help your body draw on fat stores for energy, shares one US study.

Post-workout, milk could help you burn twice as much fat as compared to a carbohydrate drink such as a sports drink, and those who drank a soy beverage lost no fat at all, reports a study supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the US National Dairy Council. Additionally, of the three drinks, drinking milk supposedly resulted in the most muscle gain.

Fat from fish oils not only prevent unhealthy fat accumulation in your body, research published in Scientific Reports shares that it encourages fat storage cells to burn the fat for energy

Cutting carbs is one of the most common ways of dieting, and it has been proven to reduce insulin levels and burn more fat. Even then, a study that appeared in Cell Metabolism shows that if you’re gunning for greater fat loss, a low-fat diet seems to be even more effective. The study had a small sample size of 19 participants, so further investigation is needed, but lead researcher Kevin Hall, PhD, concludes that in the end, the best diet may be one you can actually stick to.

According to one US study, getting enough snooze time can encourage your body to burn fat, whereas cutting back on rest could reduce your body’s fat-burning potential by half. Being short on sleep could also make you hungrier, as it increases ghrelin production, a hormone that induces you to eat more while making your body burn less energy.

Text: Yuen Yi Ying/SHAPE