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Fat Burning Exercises


One question that always comes up when talking about exercising is "what are the best fat burning exercises?  

I found many sites that claim they have the best exercise to burn fat or that their method was the best way for fat loss.  Unfortunately, not all sites agreed on what are the best fat burning exercises. 

There were two common factors, however, that most everyone agreed on.
First, to burn fat you must include some form of aerobic exercise, also known as cardiovascular exercise (or cardio). 

And secondly, you must build lean muscle by adding strength training exercises.

The controversy is not around whether or not to include aerobic exercises, but at what intensity and for how long you should do aerobic exercises to effectively burn fat.  Similarly, not everyone agrees with what are the best strength training exercises for burning fat. 



Aerobic Exercises

exercise equipmentAn effective weight loss workout routine should include both the aerobic exercises and strength training exercises.  Aerobice exercises are workouts that get your heart pumpming, such as walking briskly, bike riding, using an elliptical machine and jogging just to name a few.  

When doing aerobic exercises, you want to make sure you are working with in your target heart rate to get the benefit from you fat burning exercise routine.

A good rule of thumb is that when doing your aerobic exercise, you should be able to have a light conversation, say a few sentences at a time.  But you should not be able to sing a complete song nor should you be totally out of breath.  

If you can still sing, move it up a notch or if you are having difficulty breathing, slow it down.





Strength Training Exercises

Strength training exercises are those types of exercises that help build lean muscle.  This does not mean that you will bulk up with excessive muscles, but rather you will be strengthing and toning your body.

man and woman flexing musclesWhy strength training you ask?  Well, when you do strength training, you are building lean muscle.  The more lean muscle mass you have the higher your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR).  Your BMR is responsible for 60 - 70% of the calories you burn in a day.

Read this article to understand more on basal metabolic rate.

Strength training can be done with resistance band exercises, dumbbell exercises or doing weightlifting exercises.  Weightlifting seems to be the most recommended strength training exercise to burn fat.

Which ever you select for your strength training, just make sure you are doing the exercise correctly to get the most benefit of your fat burning exercise routine.


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Fat Loss Tip:

Build lean muscle mass and burn calories by adding circuit training to your weekly exercise routine.




Okay, now you know that you should do both aerobic exercises and strength training exercises, but this still didn't answer the question of what are the best fat burning exercises.  

Because you will need both an aerobic and strength training exercise to burn fat, we really need to reword this one question into two questions;

1. What is the best aerobic exercise to burn fat?

2. What is the best strength training fat burning exercises?  

I'll address the first of these two questions in the next section and then move on to the second question.


Page 2 - What are the best aerobic fat burning exercises?

Page 3 - What is the best strength training exercise to burn fat?






Additional articles

Weight Loss Workout
If you are just starting out and not sure which exercises to do, try this example weight loss workout for beginners.  There's an intermediate level example as well.

Fat Burning Foods
Burn even more fat by including these fat burning foods in you meal plan.







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