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How to Burn More Fat
When trying to lose weight there are many factors involved in how your metabolism turns your body-fat into heat and energy. Ultimately, however, it turns out that this is a process that is easy to promote.
Your body wants to burn fat. It is an efficient source of energy and humans are designed to burn our fat reserves most of the time. In fact, if you a breathing normally, you are mostly burning fat. When you begin to breathe heavily during exercise, it is a sign that your body has upped the amount of glycogen it is metabolizing because that requires a lot of oxygen.
So, when trying to exercise to burn fat, the tell tale sign is your breathing. This is the difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Running at full speed for a minute may get your heart rate up but it won't burn as much of your body-fat as walking the same distance will.
Good fat burning exercises are the ones that are done at a slower pace for longer periods of time like walking, stair machines, circuit weight training, and cycling. Each should be done for twenty minutes to an hour for best results.
The question often comes up of whether walking an extra mile spread out throughout the day is really beneficial or not. The answer is an emphatic yes! Any extra activity is a good thing when you are trying to lose weight. It does not all have to be done in the same hour interval.
There is another factor to think of. Many treadmills and other machines have caloric calculators that tell you how many calories that you have burnt. This information is interesting but ultimately misleading. You see, your body will continue to burn more fat even after you get off of the machine or stop walking while your metabolic cycle and heart are trying to recover from the added fatigue you have just placed on them.
Also, your body will be burning more calories trying to build muscle mass and tone for hours and, in some cases, even days after your exercise ends. Calculating all of the total calories your body uses after a good walk is impossible to do but it is certainly more than the number listed on any treadmill, so don't lose heart if you only burn fifty more calories during your workout than you would have watching TV. The actual amount of calories that you burned and the total benefits you have given your body cannot be shown by any one number.
How hard should you be breathing then? The general advise you will hear is that if you cannot hold a conversation or say a sentence clearly while exercising, then you are breathing too hard. This is an okay rule of thumb but I would put it down more to the duration of your workout. If you cannot do whatever it is that you doing for thirty minutes or more due to your being out of breath, then you are pushing yourself too hard. You will notice that seasoned runners find a pace that allows them to end their runs only semi-winded and not gasping for air. This is an ideal state for both muscle building and fat burning but it does take some practice to get all the factors just right.
So, if you just starting out, keep your workouts simple and get to where you can do them for a good period of time and you will quickly see the difference in your waistline. Slow and steady does win in the race for weight loss. So, be consistent in your exercising, visualize your goals often, and whatever you do, just keep going!
About the Author: Thomas is an ex-martial arts trainer, now a Dallasite professional trying to help other achieve their personal goals.
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