Something I’ve been trying out during 2012 to reduce my body fat % to under 10 to get a 6 pack is cold showers and baths. This is an idea I got from the 4 hour body book by Tim Ferris.
The two main reason you can lose a lot of weight with cold shower/baths
1) Water “steals” a lot of your body heat at a much faster rate than air, what this means is that your body works harder to increase it’s temperature and maintain it at the normal level when in water. Think about it, calorie is actually “energy”. Your body needs this energy to heat itself up and stay at a consistent healthy body temperature.
2) There is what they call “brown fat cells” or the actual name of brown adipose tissue (BAT) around your neck and surrounding area on top of your back as the picture below shows. These brown fat cells are apparently responsible NOT for fat storage like the well known “white” fat cells but actually for the maintenance of your body’s temperature and they burn a lot of calories to do so. There’s some research all over the place about this but this NYtimes article sums it up.