Fat Burning Workouts - Uncover The Best

By Daniel Depp

The best fat burning workouts are those which help to increase your metabolism over a sustained period of time. Long, low intensity cardio workouts have long been cited as the best way to burn fat, more recently however, studies have shown that this is not the optimum way to lose fat. In this article I will unveil two key components to high quality fat burning workouts. These revelations may well surprise you, I know they surprised me when I found out about them - they also helped me to lose over 20lbs of fat over a six month period and keep that weight off, all with very little demand on my time.

These 2 types of exercises should be incorporated into your fat burning workouts;

1. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

This type of training involves working out for short periods of time at a high intensity. HIIT is far more productive for fat-loss because it helps maintain lean muscle mass whilst increasing your body's metabolism over a longer period of time (both during and after exercise) compared to low intensity training. This increase in metabolism promotes fat burning; recent studies have shown that 20 minutes of highly intense exercise burns vastly more fat calories than 45 minutes of the same exercise performed at a low intensity.

Workouts should be performed in short bursts. I recommend beginning with a warm-up of 5 minutes duration at a low intensity followed by 30 seconds of highly intense explosive exercise before lowering intensity for 1 minute. Repeat this high-low cycle 4-5 times and then perform a cool-down at a low intensity for another 5 minutes. Your total HIIT workout should last between 16 and 18 minutes. As you improve you can increase intervals and extend your workout beyond 20 minutes. I recommend working out using this type of routine for no longer than 25 minutes 3-4 times per week.

2. Weight Lifting.

Strength training through lifting weights should comprise an important part of your fat burning workouts.

An intense weight training session helps your body to burn calories during the workout and also elevates your metabolism for as long as 39 hours after your have finished the session. During weight training your body is fueled by carbohydrates and the more intense those sessions are the more depleted carbohydrate stores become, resulting in more fat being burnt during the recovery phase.

Obviously weight lifting promotes muscle gain. This is vital for any fat-loss regime because additional muscle mass results in a higher resting metabolism - more calories are burnt throughout the day. In fact for every 1lb of lean muscle mass your body burns as much as 50 calories per day just to maintain it, that means more fat lost doing absolutely nothing! Rest is also an important part of your fat burning workouts, your body needs time to recover and grow.

Make your weights sessions quick-fire and lift as heavy as you can. My current fat burning workouts incorporate weights 3 days per week, I make sure every session I do is highly intense with fairly short rests between sets and each workout lasts no longer than 45 minutes. Follow this example and you will be well on your way to losing that stubborn body fat that has thus far refused to leave!

If you really want to blast fat away quickly and easily then I thoroughly recommend checking out The 7 Secrets To Fat-loss which unveils 7 of the most over-looked aspects to fat-loss which most people will never known. Get the upper hand by learning the secrets and applying them to your own fat burning workouts.

Should you wish to view a number of specific exercises that I have used numerous times to accelerate my own fat-loss then please visit Fat Burning Exercises and lose that fat forever!

Daniel Depp is a health and fitness fanatic. He is a former professional athlete who, since retiring found himself over-eating and piling on weight. He decided that enough was enough and embarked on a mission to gather as much information about weight-loss and fitness as he possibly could and then impliment these in his own life. He has since lost over 20 pounds of body fat, lives a healthy and vibrant lifestyle and is committed to helping others do the same. Visit his website at Secrets To Fat-loss to learn the '7 Forbidden Secrets' to ultimate fat-loss which will help you achieve the body you always wanted, permanently.

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The Truth About Cardio & Fat Loss Exercise

By Craig Ballantyne

The Fat Burning Zone is all just a big misunderstanding. The truth is, exercising in the fat burning zone is a big waste of time. You are better off doing short, burst exercise to lose your belly fat.

There is nothing magical about the so-called "fat burning zone".

By definition, the fat burning zone is the exercise intensity where your body burns the highest proportion of fat.

However, the fat burning zone is relatively low intensity exercise, and burns less calories than if you worked at a harder pace for the same amount of time.

The fat burning zone has never been shown in a study to be more effective for fat loss than any other type of exercise.

The purpose of exercise is to burn calories during and after exercise when the body is recovering from the workout. The fat burning zone is generally low-intensity exercise, but low-intensity exercise burns fewer calories.

Therefore, forget about this term and this fat burning myth. Instead, use the interval training guidelines from any of my weight loss workout programs to improve your fitness, calorie burning, and fat loss.

You can't magically lose fat from one area? Will you lose fat from a specific area by doing certain exercises? What exercises will help you lose my love handles?

The answer of course, is "No, you can't lose fat from a specific area just by doing certain exercises."

This is also known as spot reducing, and just can't be done. If we told you that there was one secret exercise that could magically reduce the fat from one of your trouble spots, then we'd be rich. But we'd also be lying.

Fat burning isn't like building muscle. When you strength train to build muscle, you only make gains in the specific muscles that were trained ("spot gaining"). But no exercise has the ability to burn fat from one specific area only ("spot reducing").

When you exercise, you burn fat from all over your body. Doing one thousand ab crunches won't help you lose your belly fat any faster than a good total- body routine.

The best approach to fat loss is one that includes three major components.

Nutrition is numero uno when it comes to fat burning. It is so important for people to follow good nutrition principles when they are trying to improve their body. If you haven't already heard these basic recommendations for fat loss nutrition, here are the 5 best fat loss nutrition tips:

1. Eat several small meals per day, rather than 2-3 large meals.

2. Monitor your food intake using one of the free websites that allow you to track your calories.

3. Determine how many calories you should eat per day to maintain your bodyweight.

4. If you want to lose fat, start by reducing your food intake by 200-300 calories per day below your maintenance level and add 3 workouts per week using my workout programs.

5. Stop eating processed foods and replace all sweetened beverages with water or Green Tea. This can quickly reduce your food intake by hundreds of calories immediately.


Discover the top 5 fat loss myths at http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com - home of the world's most effective fat loss workouts.

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Exercise And Weight Loss

By George Best

Most people know that exercise is an important part of any weight loss program, but there is considerable confusion over what type of exercise and how much is needed to produce maximum results. Even experts cannot agree as to what the "right" exercise is to produce weight loss, and in part this confusion lies in the fact that many experts rely on only a partial analysis of the available research on exercise physiology, and there is often a tendency to make "one-size-fits-all" recommendations, when the reality is that different people will actually get different results from different approaches.

Let's begin with what the current research on exercise physiology tells us. It is well-established that it takes approximately 30 minutes of any kind of exercise for the body to burn off its glycogen (stored sugar) reserves and begin burning fat. So, most experts recommend at least 30 minutes of exercise, and generally 60 minutes or more may be recommended to get a good amount of fat burning. Now, if you are going to be exercising for 30 to 60 minutes, or maybe more, what type of exercise would you be able to do for that length of time? It probably would have to be low to medium intensity. In other words, you're probably not going to be able to run full speed or do any other type of high-intensity exercise for 30 to 60 minutes without a rest, unless you happen to be an elite athlete, and even then you'd be struggling. So, by default, the common recommendation for exercise to lose weight has been 30 to 60 minutes of low to medium intensity aerobic exercise. Aerobic translates to "in the presence of oxygen", which in common language means that aerobic exercise is any type of activity that you can do without gasping for breath.

In recent years, some experts have changed their recommendations to using a more intense anaerobic ("without oxygen") exercise program for weight loss. This would include things like intense weight lifting, and something called "interval training". Interval training involves brief bursts of high intensity activity with periods of rest or low intensity activity in between. For example, you might run full out for 30 seconds or a minute and then walk for a minute or two until you catch your breath and then run again full out for 30 seconds to a minute, walk again, etc.. Since this type of exercise is much more physically demanding, it is done over a much shorter overall workout period - perhaps 20 to 40 minutes (with half or more of that time being rest or low intensity activity), as compared to the 30 to 60 minutes of continuous activity as recommended for aerobic exercise. The question is, how do the two types of exercise compare in terms of their ability to promote fat burning?

The aerobic exercise promoters point to the research that was mentioned earlier that has shown that any exercise, no matter how intense requires at least 30 minutes to use up the body's stored glycogen (the body will normally burn glycogen before it will burn fat) before fat burning can begin. So, they say, short periods of even highly intense exercise won't burn much fat and is therefore not a good choice for promoting weight loss. But they are only seeing part of the story. It is true that you must exercise for at least 30 minutes to begin to achieve fat burning - but that's at the time you are exercising. Brief bursts of intense anaerobic exercise does something that even quite a lot of low to medium intensity aerobic exercise does not. Intense anaerobic exercise stimulates the production of growth hormone, which is a strong stimulator of fat burning. The thing is, the release of growth hormone triggered by intense anaerobic exercise comes 24 to 48 hours AFTER the exercise, and then it produces considerably more fat burning than is possible with all but extremely long periods of low to medium intensity aerobic exercise.

Because of this effect, most people will lose weight much more easily by doing shorter periods of more intense exercise. 20 to 40 minutes of heavy weightlifting, interval training (which could be done on foot, on a bicycle, swimming, kickboxing, etc.Any kind of activity in which there are periodic bursts of intense exertion interspersed with rest periods, or periods of low intensity activity is typically preferable in the long run for weight control than even long hours of lower intensity aerobic exercise.

Now, you'll notice that I said "most people". There is an exception to the rule. Anyone who is seriously emotionally or physically stressed in his or her daily life is prone to overstimulated adrenal glands. The adrenal glands do a lot of things in the body, but with regards to weight loss, they produce two hormones. One hormone is cortisol, which promotes fat deposition in the lower abdomen. This is typically a saggy, pendulous fat held below the waistline. The other hormone the adrenals produce is adrenaline (also called epinephrine), which actually promotes fat burning. Since the adrenals produce cortisol which causes fat deposition and adrenaline which promotes fat burning, you might assume that these two hormones cancel each other out. Unfortunately, cortisol production can be carried out by a much longer time by the adrenal glands than can the production of adrenaline, so long-term, the effects of high cortisol production (deposition of fat in the lower belly), will overcome whatever fat burning might occur from the short-term adrenaline production.

The adrenals are influenced by physical stress as well as mental stress, so for someone who is under a lot of stress in general in his or her life, high-intensity exercise will only add to the total stress and will tend to make the adrenals produce a lot of cortisol, and therefore will tend to promote lower abdomen weight gain. That's right - the wrong kind of exercise in this situation can cause weight gain! This can be the source of considerable frustration when one is faced with the situation in which he or she is working out very hard to burn off that lower belly bulge, but never can seem to get rid of it. Due to the fact that the intense exercise is causing even more cortisol to be produced, their efforts are counterproductive. Because of this effect, it is recommended that people under a lot of stress and/or who have most of their weight held in the lower abdomen stick to relatively low intensity aerobic exercise. This type of exercise tends to help with stress control and lowers cortisol levels, allowing the lower belly fat to gradually be burned off.

I hope that this article has given you a better concept of how to maximize your exercise routine for the best possible weight loss results.

Dr. George Best has been a holistic healthcare provider for 15 years. For more information on natural weight loss, please visit http://www.TrainYourBrain4WeightLoss.com , or email to DrBest@trainyourbrain4weightloss.com.

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The Truth about How to Burn Holiday Fat

By Holly Rigsby

"Activity is not Achievement"

Does the solution to losing those unwanted holiday pounds really lie in doing more cardio? We justwrapped up a 6-week period where we were bombarded with strategies to burn off the dreaded holiday weight gain that sound great in theory but don't measure up in the real world.

They tell you that the more active you are, the more calories you burn, right? Sure, but how much time do you have? If "moving more" is THE solution, are you ready to make the time to add in the extra activity?

Did you eat a piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream? Well it talked a lot of 'activity' to burn 450 calories.

Misleading Solution - Brisk Walking, to burn 3-5.7 calories per minute. So do you have 80 to 150 extra minutes just to burn this one indulgence off? What about all the other treats you indulged in over the holidays?

Do you want to Maintain or Achieve?

"So go ahead and indulge, just plan on some extra time on the treadmill, and you will be back to your pre-holiday weight."

This is a quote that is floating around out there that comforts us as we go back for second helpings!

Yes, there is a difference between maintaining your weight after the holidays vs. getting back to having the body you want.

Extended periods of cardio offer little return for the precious time you invest. Beating the holiday bulge is more than how many calories you burn during a workout. Rather, the solution lies in increasing and maintaining lean muscle through short burst exercise.

Cardio does nothing to increase muscle and in come cases actually breaks down your muscle! Unlike traditional cardio, short burst exercise will boost your metabolism and increase the number of calories your burn 24-7, essentially making your body work for you!

Do not abandon the basic principles of Fat Loss following the holidays. Working longer and harder will not get you faster results. Stop wasting your time with hours of traditional cardio.

Your Post-Holiday Fat Loss Solution lies in moderation and Short Burst Resistance Training and Intervals. With as little as 90 minutes a week, you can lose up to 2 pounds of fat. Practice a bit of balance and moderation with your diet and your results will be even greater! So integrate Short Burst Training into your New Year's Plan and watch those holiday pounds disappear!

Holly Rigsby is a nationally recognized women's fitness coach, certified personal trainer (CPT) and the author of the internationally popular e-book - Fit Yummy Mummy - Burn Your Baby Fat & Get Your Body Back. Go to http://www.fityummymummy.com to get your FREE copy of her special report: "The Top 5 Busy Mom Metabolism Boosters."

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