Free Healthy Weight Loss Tips

 Free Healthy Weight Loss Tips

By Azeez Shukurat

Are you planning to lose weight? Before you start, take a look over these free tips to make your efforts to lose weight more beneficial. These tips will help you to improve your metabolic process, resulting in rapid weight loss.
Pay Attention to Dieting
Dieting is not just eating less, but eating nutritionally rich foods and low in calories, making you feel full throughout the day. That's important, because restricting food usually makes your body think it is starving. Resultantly your body decreases metabolic process to retain the existing energy. The worst part of this type of dieting is, if the food shortage continues, you begin to burn muscles instead of fats. Your metabolism slows down and the fat starts to claim even more territory inside your body.
Pay Attention to you Sleeping Habits
"Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise". A study was conducted on twins in Finland. The result of that study shows, the brother who slept less was overweight and under more stress.
Eat More Protein
Your body needs protein to maintain lean muscle mass. Add 1.0 gram lean meat per kilogram of your total body weight e.g. (if your body weight is 60kg, the amount of you need to take 60 grams of protein everyday). Add a small portion of lean meat, two tablespoons of nuts, a bit of yogurt with each meal or snack. Furthermore, research has shown that protein ingested after a meal can burn up to 35% more calories.
Prefer organic food
Canadian researchers said that most pesticides and pollutants found in vegetables are accumulated in fat cells resulting in a decrease in metabolism.
Onions, avocado or grapefruit do not need not be organic, but opt for organic if you are buying peaches, strawberries, apples, nectarines, bell peppers, kale, spinach or kale, cherries, potatoes or grapes because these foods tend to have more pesticides.
Stay Active
Sitting for longer durations of time certainly affects the weight loss process. Researchers have found, continuously sitting for four hours or more causes an enzyme which controls cholesterol and fat inoperable. To keep that enzyme active to burn fats, move around at least once every hour e.g. walking around when talking on phone not only keeps you active but also does not take extra time.
Ice Water is good!
Drinking 6 cups of ice water every day can increase the calorie expenditure even when the body is at rest. This tip alone can help you lose 5 kg in one year. The technical reason behind this is your body has to heat up in order to maintain a normal body temperature.
In last I just have to say, losing weight is not a one day or one week or one month process. Please do not get scammed by so called rapid weight loss products marketed online to rob your hard earned money. I am not saying that every weight loss program is a scam. But do a research, read product reviews before actually buying anything.

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Exercise and Fat Loss|Examining Strategies for Maximizing Fat Loss During Workouts

These days almost everyone is concerned with losing weight or more importantly losing fat. I am asked more questions about this topic than all others and it is an obvious source of confusion for many people. The problem is there are many different opinions about the best way to lose fat and most have at least some truth to them.
One popular strategy suggests concentrating on the percentage of calories from fat that you burn during the exercise. This leads to recommendations for exercising at a particular intensity/heart rate, which is often called the fat burning zone. This sounds like a good way to figure out how to exercise for maximal fat burning, but when you exercise to burn the highest percentage of fat, you end up burning fewer total calories, because the exercise intensity is too low.
Another common strategy is to focus on the total number of calories burned during your workout instead of the actual fat calories. This is recommended because unless you burn more calories throughout the day than you consume, you will never lose fat, regardless of the percentage of calories you burn while exercising. This is true, but just looking at the number or type of calories burned while exercising never gives you the full story.
There are however other important factors that are often overlooked when determining how to exercise for optimal fat loss. First, some types of exercise, such as resistance training, may not burn a lot of calories during the actual workout, but your body will keep burning calories at a higher rate for many hours after you stop exercising. This increased calorie burning effect will vary depending on the duration, intensity, and type of exercise. As a result, it becomes very difficult to accurately determine how many calories are really burned due to your workout.
Fortunately, knowing how many calories or how much fat you burn while exercising is not as important as you might think. The real issue is how your workout affects your metabolism. Increasing your metabolism is by far the most beneficial thing you can do to improve long-term fat loss. Your metabolism is responsible for burning many more calories than exercise and if your main goal is fat loss, you should focus on increasing your metabolism as much as possible.
Increasing the body's metabolism is a complicated issue that is affected by genetics, exercise, nutrition, and a number of other lifestyle factors. Since this article is about exercise and this issue is too large to be properly addressed in this article, I will concentrate on a basic strategy to help improve your metabolism.
This strategy essentially has 2 main goals, preventing muscle loss and challenging your body. Muscle has a significant influence on your metabolic rate and every pound of muscle burns about 30 calories per day. If you stop doing exercises that stress your muscles, you will start losing muscle and your metabolism will slow down. Moderate to high intensity resistance training (weights, bodyweight exercises, etc.) is an ideal choice for this type of workout.
As a general rule, you should perform exercises that are difficult enough that you are unable to perform 15 reps; 6 to 12 reps per exercise is a good range. This may be more intense than your usual workout, but if you only have enough time for a short workout, it will be enough intensity to retain your current level of muscle. Also, since your exercise time will be short and the number of total sets will be low, you shouldn't have to worry about gaining muscle or bulking up. Bodybuilders have large muscles mainly because they perform an excessive number of sets, sometimes 20-30 per muscle group, not because they lift heavier weights.
The overall workout only needs to be 15-30 minutes long and you have some options as to how to design the workout. You can do 1 set of many different exercises, multiple sets of a few exercises or anything in between. With the increased intensity of the exercises, you probably won't want to exercise much longer anyway.
I also suggest performing a higher percentage of leg exercises (squats, lunges, etc.) than usual. This is because your largest muscles are in your legs and exercises that stress large muscles create a greater overall demand on the body and produce better metabolic improvements. Try for 35 - 40 % leg exercises if your workout is 30 minutes and around 50% if the workout is closer to 15 minutes. This approach will also maximize the number of calories burned during the workout and result in more calories being burned throughout the day.
If you would rather perform endurance activities (running, biking, etc.), you can apply the same principles of increasing the intensity to make the exercise more demanding. Perhaps the best method is to replace a constant intensity aerobic workout with a shorter interval training workout. This involves alternating between your normal pace and much more challenging pace. For example if you are a runner, you could alternate between running for 1 minute at your regular speed and sprinting for 30 seconds.
Regardless of which approach you take, you should feel about as fatigued at the end of your short workout as you do after a regular length workout. However, if you are not accustomed to more intense training, it is important to start out slowly and let your body adapt to the training. It is very important not to overdo it or push yourself too hard. You want to feel fatigued, but not run down or excessively sore. Also, even though the workout is short, you still need to warm up before the workout and stretch/cool down after you finish.
Keep in mind this strategy does not represent a complete well-rounded fitness program and is not intended to replace your existing program. It is especially useful during times when you may have a limited amount of time to exercise, such as while traveling and it is also beneficial for adding variety to your program. I chose this approach so people with different workout routines and overall goals could apply the strategy to their individual situations.
Look at your existing program and determine how to apply this information to benefit your most. In addition, be sure to remember that nutrition and lifestyle factors (sleep, stress, etc.) are always important too. You can have the best exercise program in the world and if you have bad nutrition and lifestyle habits you will still have a hard time losing fat.

The Best Exercise to Lose Weight

In an effort to save you weeks or months of time using the 'trial and error' method of finding the best exercise to lose weight, I'm going to share with you some information that will surely help you determine not only the best exercise to lose weight, but also powerhouse motivation methods to ensure that you continue to do it - rather than perform the exercise regularly for only a few weeks or months before making excuses and giving up.
Very few of us have much time in the day to waste, and to this end we certainly don't want to frustrate ourselves using our time and energy trying to lose weight through methods that don't give us great results.
Personally, it took me several weeks to figure out what the best exercise to lose weight was. Doctors had their opinions, nutritionists theirs, and bodybuilders had their own thoughts. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how the different factions were measuring their results.
It then struck me like a brick to the head that I needed to go directly to the source: find the people who were actually successfully losing weight. As a result, I spent a lot of time researching the habits of the people who had gone from, say, 300 pounds to 150 and less.
Here is what I found based on what a few dozen such people do:
- The two most popular aerobic activities among successful fat-burners were 1)running and 2)spinning.
- 97% also engaged in weight-training or some form of resistance training to build muscle (and lose weight as a result).
- The majority began their exercise sessions in small increments, some as little as 5 minutes at a time, and gradually worked their way up
I did research into aerobic exercise and exactly why I would need to do it in order to lose weight. I discovered that exercise involving continuous movement for a sustained period of time (30 - 60 minutes when you can reach that level) is crucial because when you engage in any form of exercise the first thing that happens is that the body burns glycogen (stored carbohydrates that fuel muscle contraction) rather than fat. It is only after the glycogen stores are depleted that the fat begins to burn. This explained to me why I was not seeing fantasti results with 10-15 minute cardio sessions, and gave to me the first component of the best exercise to lose weight.
Although running and spinning were the most popular for the most successful 'fat-burners' I studied, many were also getting great results in the gym using things like:

• Elliptical machines
• Rowing machines
• Stair-climbing machines
• Cross-country ski machines

I would guess that running and spinning were the most popular because even if you have the most penny-ante fitness center in your apartment building, they will usually include a treadmill and a stationary bike. Also, running does not require any equipment, and if you own a bicycle then you can use that in lieu of a stationary bike - as long as you make it an aerobic exercise (for example, by cycling on a track somewhere) rather than an anaerobic exercise (where you're continuously starting and stopping). Making it anaerobic takes away the 'best exercise' aspect of it since the fat stores don't get touched as much.The main reason I have listed the other aerobic options above is because ultimately, the best exercise to lose weight is the one that not only fulfills the requirements of sustained aerobic activity, but - and this is crucial - is something that you will enjoy. Enjoyment of an exercise will ultimately determine whether you decide to do it regularly, so this has to be factored into the 'best exercise' criteria. If you truly don't enjoy running, and can't picture yourself doing it regularly in the long-term, then it's not 'best' for you, and you're better off doing a different type of aerobic exercise that will still yield great results.
The other 'best exercise to lose weight' gives you results in a different (though equally effective) way. While aerobic exercise burns fat as you are doing it and for a short time afterwards, weight training builds muscle that speeds up your metabolism even while you are not doing any kind of exercise whatsoever. That's right - the greater amount of lean body mass that results from building muscle means that you are burning off more calories each day while you are at rest.
This is the reason why 97% of the people I studied were including weight training in their exercise plans. Make note as well that 95% of the people I studied were female, and were not involved in weight training in order to become professional bodybuilders. They simply understood the importance of resistance training towards long-term weight loss.
So, what kind of exercise schedule do you need to maintain in order to see the best results? As stated above, I found that for aerobic exercise 30 - 60 minute sessions, 4 - 6 days a week are great. However, as also stated above, many of the most successful 'fat-burners' began their exercise lifestyle with much smaller exercise sessions. If you can't do more than 5 minutes or so right now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's great to get started small so that you can get a feel for good exercise form. Make small goals for yourself, such as, "in 2 weeks I will do 7 minutes each day, in 4 weeks I will do 10 minutes", etc, and you will have reason to feel great about yourself every time you hit a new goal.
For weight training, the important thing is just to integrate it into your lifestyle. There are many different ways that the most successful do this: some do 2 days a week, 25 - 45 minutes each day on those days that they don't do cardio; some do it 3 days a week, 25 - 45 minutes a day on those days that they don't do cardio; some do it 3 days a week, 25 - 45 minutes a day right before their cardio sessions; others make the effort to do 4 days a week. The best results are had, however, when you don't do a weight training session for more than 2 days in a row, as your muscles grow in the recovery period, not during the session itself.
The easy rule of thumb for the actual performance is to use enough weight so that you get to the point of muscle failure at between 6 - 12 repetitions of the movement. When a given exercise gets too easy for you, simply increase the weight, or decrease it if you can't do a minimum of 6 reps. Eventually, you will want to do up to 3 or 4 sets of these, though if you can only squeeze out 1 set of certain exercises at the beginning, that's fine. You will progress as your body tells you that you can.
Since this article is entitled 'The best exercise to lose weight', then what is the best exercise in the weight-training category to ultimately lose weight with? Although there are literally thousands of different resistance exercises you can do with various types of equipment, the best exercise to do is a basic one using free weights. These include 'press' exercises (like the military press and bench press); squats (sometimes called the 'king of exercises' because of muscle growth potential of these exercises); lunges (with a barbell or dumbbells); and rows (includes the deadlift, high-pull, and the bent-over row).
At the beginning of this article I spoke about finding methods to ensure that you will keep at your exercise and lessen your temptation to give up. The number one way to do this is to consider all of the effective exercises listed and figure out which of them you would enjoy most. Another important method is to ease yourself into it, rather than thinking you 'should' do a certain amount of exercise, find that you can't, and give up in frustration. Many others motivate themselves by using their exercise time to listen to music that they haven't gotten around to hearing (by bringing a portable device and some earphones), by catching up on the news or watching TV (even most gyms have televisions in their cardio rooms now), or to catch up on their reading. The latter two are not recommended when you first begin, so that you can focus on your form and the sensations arising, but they may help push you to exercise later when you need the motivation more.
So, ultimately the best exercise to lose weight actually comes in two different forms, aerobic exercise and resistance training. They complement each other like Laurel & Hardy, peanut butter & jelly, and you & your thinner new body.

I learn from the very best - the most successful 'fat-burners' who win the battle over failure and self-hatred to lose all those unwanted pounds of body fat...
What methods do they use to completely change their lives and make themselves happy and healthy beyond their wildest dreams?

HOW TO CONTROL WEIGHT WITH EXERCISE

It is widely assumed that exercise is a key part of controlling one's weight. However, there are many people who find that exercise alone has very little impact on their weight while others seem able to exercise and lose weight easily. What is going on? Well, people all respond slightly differently to exercise due to age, sex and their genetic inheritance. However, despite any difficulty in losing weight that you may have inherited, there are different forms of exercise that will definitely be able to help you lose weight. The different forms of exercise all have different effects on weight loss. Below I look at:

1. Easy/medium intensity cardiovascular exercise - aerobic.
2. Hard, high intensity cardiovascular exercise - anaerobic.
3. Weight training and other resistance exercise.

1 Aerobic exercise
What is aerobic exercise? Aerobic exercise is exercise which most people can sustain for hours if properly conditioned. Heart rates are typically 55-85% of the maximum heart rate. You breathe in oxygen through your lungs at a rate which generally allows you to talk. Your heart then pumps blood containing the oxygen to your muscle fibres. As your muscle fibres contract to produce movement, they use up oxygen. The harder and faster you go, the more oxygen that you need, and as a consequence you breathe faster. As you increase your effort your muscle fibres burn up more sugars and fats to produce the energy required to make them contract. The result? You burn calories faster.
What is fat burning? Fat burning is a form of aerobic exercise that became popular in the nineties. It is basically lower intensity aerobic exercise. Heart rates are at typically 55-65% of the maximum heart rate. Unfortunately it is not the best way to remove excess fat. You actually burn more fat as you increase the effort. Although the fat burning zone burns a greater proportion of fat compared to sugar than high effort zones, the high effort zones burn both more fat and more sugar. The amount of sugar burnt increases faster than the amount of fats as you up the effort, and so you could say you enter a sugar burning zone as you go harder. However, along with the sugar you will also be burning more fat. There are many studies that have looked at the weight loss effects of aerobic exercise. Most show a small positive benefit, but one that is far less effective than modifying dietary intake. These studies have been mostly done on sedentary or obese people and involve amounts of exercise typically of between 2-4 hours per week. The truth is that if you are not intending to do more than 2-4 hours of aerobic exercise per week, then you are unlikely to lose much weight as a result, unless you also significantly modify your diet. However, that is not to say you shouldn't do it. Most studies also show that physical and psychological health both benefit significantly from this small amount of exercise when compared to doing nothing. Larger amounts of more intensive aerobic exercise are generally more effective at achieving weight loss. The effects of larger amounts of exercise on people vary. Some are responders and others non-responders. Non-responders are thought to be people who reduce their levels of everyday activity when undertaking an exercise program, in order to compensate. In other words if you are going to treat yourself with extra food or slump in front of the TV after introducing a new exercise routine then it may well not have any effect on your weight. I have many clients who are responders, who eat more healthily when exercising a lot and who treat themselves when they are having a break from their hard exercise routines. Needless to say these clients are prone to developing a small paunch when taking it easy, but find it easy to lose the weight once they start up their exercise routines once again.
2 High intensity - anaerobic exercise
Anaerobic threshold is defined as the point during a graded exercise test at which lactate in the blood begins to accumulate faster than it can be got rid of. A fit athlete can maintain an effort at the anaerobic threshold for about 1 hour as long as the blood lactate does not continue to rise. If the intensity of exercise continues to increase from this point, as it would in a graded exercise test, then acidification occurs. This is due to the accumulation of hydrogen ions formed when the lactic acid produced in muscle is converted to lactate. The acidification soon causes a severe muscle fatigue and the intensity of exercise can no longer be maintained.
What is anaerobic exercise?
Your muscle fibres, and most other cells in your body have two main routes of making energy. The first is aerobic respiration in which sugar or fat is burnt with oxygen in the mitochondria to produce the energy. Think of mitochondria as power stations. The second is anaerobic respiration, in which sugar is turned into lactic acid without a need for oxygen to produce energy. This happens in the sarcoplasm of the muscle cells. Anaerobic exercise occurs when you run low on oxygen. As you exercise harder your muscle fibres try to get more oxygen into the mitochondria to burn your fuel faster. As you pass through your anaerobic threshold (see panel to the left), your body is not providing enough oxygen for your mitochondria to produce all the energy you need. Your muscle then increasingly relies on the anaerobic respiration in the sarcoplasm. So at this point the mitochondrial power stations are working at close to full capacity and as a result you are breathing pretty hard. Anaerobic respiration is interesting in that it uses up sugar 15 times faster than the mitochondria. How could this affect weight loss? Well this form of respiration is now burning calories 15 times faster than the mitochondrial one. The fact is that as you push harder beyond the anaerobic threshold you make increasing use of anaerobic respiration and so burn calories at exponentially increasing rates. You reach a point at which your breathing is at a maximum. This is called the VO2max. A fit athlete may be able to maintain this rate of breathing for a maximum of 10 minutes. Your mitochondria are now working at full capacity and your anaerobic respiration in the sarcoplasm is working towards maximum. The anaerobic metabolism is building up lactic acid, which results in increasing acidosis in the muscles the longer and harder you go on. The fatigue becomes unbearable and you soon slow down.
Will I lose weight?
Clearly you can burn calories quickly with intense exercise. However, you can't maintain high intensity for long and so the total amount of calories burnt may be less than during a long aerobic workout. However it is likely that your body will remain working long after the exercise finishes, as it will need to repair itself from the muscular trauma that normally accompanies high intensity efforts. Other bodily systems are stressed as well, and these all need energy to be fully repaired. Basically anaerobic exercise is a useful weight control tool, but because of its intense nature it should be used sensibly. It is easy to over exercise and end up injured, ill or disheartened. It is important to recover from intense sessions, ideally you become fit enough to use easier exercise sessions as a recovery between the harder sessions. This way the metabolism is kept high and calories continue to be burnt faster than before.
3 Resistance exercise
Resistance exercise leads to more muscle mass and an increased metabolic rate that burns more calories. This is because muscle tissue requires more calories at rest than fat containing adipose tissue.
Will I lose weight?
There are a number of studies that show resistance exercise to be effective at producing weight loss. These exercises also increase the tone of your body. If you select a good range of exercises including bodyweight exercises and exercises that challenge your balance and agility, you should find many benefits that go beyond mere weight loss and looking good. In particular a stronger more supple body is less injury prone. As a result, less time is spent injured, and exercise regimes can be kept up for longer without breaks. Breaks that can easily lead to unwanted weight gain from excess fat deposited around the body. Also it is worth remembering that the muscle strength and flexibility gained from resistance exercise can increase the efficiency of your movements and open up the possibility of new movements that can burn yet more calories.
Won't I become too muscular?
If you are female and worried that resistance exercise or exercise with weights in particular will make you too muscular and male in appearance then think again. There are many different ways of doing weights and plenty which build strength, agility and balance without increasing muscle bulk. Most bodyweight exercises won't bulk you up, nor will all the balance and agility exercises that you can do. Into the bargain you will find that weight training will build strength, which will help you avoid injury. It will also tone up your torso, arms and legs, reducing flabbiness, cellulite and bingo wings.
In summary
Exercise is highly beneficial to psychological health and physical health. The confidence and satisfaction gained from keeping an exercise programme going add to self esteem and very often have a positive impact on attempts to change diet. As explained above, the exercise itself is most likely to reduce your weight if you follow as many of the following points as possible:

1. Keep the exercise programme going for at least 3 months or more.
2. Build up your exercise programme to at least 5 hours per week.
3. Try to incorporate all types of exercise, steady aerobic efforts, short and hard anaerobic efforts and resistance training.
4. Don't build up too quickly. If you are getting particularly sore or tired, ease off a bit with shorter sessions and/or less intense exercises.
5. Keep it enjoyable. This exercise lark only really works when you enjoy it. So make it an exercise/sport that appeals. If not the chances of giving up and putting weight back on are high.

How Exercises to Get a Perfect Flat Stomach Fast

Burn the Calories with Circuit Training
Improve your chances of burning the fat around your stomach with some circuit training. This is best completed three days a week and can incorporate a mixture of exercises to tone your stomach, along with other areas of your body. Make sure you throw in some short bursts of cardio training too so that you increase the amount of calories you burn.
Crunches and Sit Ups for Stronger Stomach Muscles
Do sets of crunches and sit ups to help strengthen your stomach muscles. Incorporate the different types of sit ups, including twists, normal and side sit ups to work on the different muscle groups - crunches help to work on the upper stomach muscles. You can place your legs under a couch or have someone hold them but you'll get more of a workout by trying to keep your legs on the floor.
Leg Raises Tone the Stomach Too
Many people focus so much on sit ups that they forget about the other workouts that help the stomach muscles. Leg raises are a great way of strengthening the stomach muscles, especially if you raise both legs at a time; however, focus on one at a time at first to avoid injury. Lay flat on your back and raise the legs up and hold for a few seconds before lowering. Keep your movements slow and controlled to make the most of it.
Push Ups to Train the Core
Your core stability will affect your stomach muscles. Push ups will make your arms stronger but they also help you control your core too. They make you remain balanced while you try to keep the buttock level and parallel to the floor. If you struggle with push ups, start by doing them on your knees so you build your core first.
The Plank for the Core Stability
Another great exercise for core stability is the plank. Start off by lying on the floor on your stomach and push yourself up onto your elbows. Only your elbows and toes should be on the floor. The rest of your body should be level. Hold this position for 15 seconds and then relax and repeat 20 times. As your core becomes stronger, hold the position for longer.
Play Superman
No don't try to fly around. Lay on your stomach and lift your right arm and left leg so they are completely off the ground - it looks as if you're trying to be superman! This will control your core stability.
Work on the Lower Back Too
While working on your stomach muscles, help your whole core by working on the lower back muscles. This helps to keep your posture perfect. Lay on your stomach with your hands behind your head and raise your chest off the floor and lower back down.

Increase Your Fat Burning Potential During and After Exercise

 Most people are aware that doing some form of exercise is beneficial, not only for losing unwanted body fat, but also for improving overall health. However, many are unaware of certain factors that can significantly increase the fat burning potential while performing exercise and during recovery (rest). Four of the most important factors to consider are: time interval from last meal, type of pre-exercise meal, intensity of aerobic exercise and type of exercise (aerobic versus resistance training).
Time Interval from Last Meal to Exercise Performance
How long should someone wait before performing exercise in order to maximize the amount of fat burned during exercise and while resting? There are a number of studies that address this very question and have shown that fat burning is greater when exercise is performed after an overnight fast or in the morning before having breakfast.
One such study (1) looked at eleven overweight and untrained men over a 4-month course of doing aerobic exercise performed after either an overnight fast or 3-hours after consuming a standard meal. The authors noted that the amount of fat burned during exercise was significantly higher following an overnight fast than after 3-hours post-meal. They also observed that fat burning was even higher during the recovery (resting) phase in the fasting group. In conclusion, the amount of fat burned during exercise and while resting was more pronounced when exercise was performed after an overnight fast as opposed to 3-hours after eating a meal.
But, what if you cannot exercise first thing in the morning due to time restraints, and working out later in the afternoon or evening is more practical - what are your options? The timing of your last meal is still very important as to the amount of fat burned during your exercise session. Researches (2) studied the effects of exercise on fat burning in eight overweight and obese women in two trials of exercise: one performed 1-hour after a meal and the other performed 3-hours after the consuming the same meal. The amount of fat burned was greater during exercise and during rest in the 3-hour post-meal group.
Bottom Line: If your goal is to lose body fat, then the longer you wait after eating a meal the more fat you will burn not only during exercise, but afterwards while resting.
Pre-exercise Meal
What you eat prior to performing exercise is also very important regarding the amount of fat burned during exercise and afterwards during recovery. Individuals who consume carbohydrates before exercising, especially alone, in large amounts or high in glycemic rating, inhibit their ability to burn body fat during exercise and afterwards at rest. Eight healthy sedentary women were fed either a high-glycemic or low-glycemic breakfast 3-hours before walking for 60-minutes(3). Each of the meals had the same amounts of carbohydrate, protein, fat and total calories, but differed in glycemic index rating and total fiber: the low-glycemic index meal was higher in fiber. The researches noted that the amount of fat burned during exercise was twice as much after the low-glycemic meal than the high-glycemic meal both consumed 3-hours before exercise. The amount of fat burned during post-exercise resting was also higher in the low-glycemic index group.
The glycemic index rating reflects the speed at which carbohydrates are digested and absorbed into the bloodstream resulting in elevations in blood sugar and insulin. The higher the glycemic index rating the more rapid the absorption and subsequent blood sugar and insulin elevations. Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas gland, regulates sugar and fat utilization. When elevated, fats release from fat cells is inhibited.
Some common high-glycemic foods consumed at breakfast are cereals (corn, rice, wheat), instant oatmeal, white flour baked goods (toast, bagels, croissants, doughnuts), sweetened jams, and white potatoes (hash browns).
Bottom Line: If your goal is to burn body fat, then consume low-glycemic carbohydrates in combination with quality proteins and fats at least 3-hours prior to performing exercise. Do not consume sports drinks, sugary fruit juices or high-glycemic carbohydrates before regular exercise - doing so will inhibit your fat burning potential.
Intensity of Exercise
Generally, the amount of fat burned during exercise is inversely proportional to the intensity level. In other words, the higher the exercise intensity the less fat is burned (while exercising) with sugar (glucose) becoming the dominate fuel source. Of course, this is a very simplistic interpretation - the actual intensity level of exercise is relevant to your fitness status. The better shape you are in, the more efficiently your muscles will burn fat during exercise and while at rest.
Aerobic fitness is determined by an individual's ability (heart and lungs) to supply the tissues with oxygen during exercise, and is known as VO2max. The higher someone's VO2max, the greater his or her aerobic fitness. The goal is to increase your ability to burn fat during exercise while increasing overall aerobic fitness. Research (4) has shown us that exercising at 40% VO2max is the optimal for burning fat during exercise and greater aerobic capacity is achieved when exercising at 60-80% VO2max. How do you translate VO2max in a more realistic or easy way to understand and use? Without fancy lab equipment or exercise testing, an easy way to determine your desired exercise intensity range is to calculate your maximum heart rate - all you need is your age and a simple formula (5).
Maximum Heart Rate (HRmax) = 205.8 - (0.685 x age)

• Example Age = 45
• 205.8 - (0.685 x 45)
• 205.8 - 30.83 = 175
• HRmax = 175 beats per minute

Now that you know how to calculate your maximum heart rate, all you have to do is take a percentage of that number based on your desired intensity level for maximizing your fat burning potential: 40% VO2max is equivalent to 63% of maximum heart rate (6). To improve aerobic capacity and fitness, increasing to and 60% VO2max is equivalent to 75% maximum heart rate, and 80% VO2max is equivalent to 88% maximum heart rate. Using the maximum heart rate example above, you can easily determine your optimum fat burning and aerobic fitness heart rate zone.

• 175 maximum heart rate x 63% = 110 beats per minute
• 175 maximum heart rate x 75% = 131 beats per minute
• 175 maximum heart rate x 88% = 154 beats per minute

In the above example, the optimum heart rate during exercise for fat burning is 110 beats per minute, and to increase aerobic fitness the heart rate range is 131-154 beats per minutes. However, since burning fat is best achieved at lower intensities and improved aerobic fitness is accomplished when exercising at higher intensities - how does one manage to accomplish both?
One solution is interval aerobic training. This type of aerobic exercise incorporates both low-intensity and high-intensity in one workout session. An example of this type of exercise: warm up for a few minutes at a low intensity then increase your intensity to 63% of your maximum heart rate or in the above example, 110 beats per minute. Exercise at this intensity for 5-minutes then increase your intensity to 75%-88% of your maximum heart rate for 1-minute (131-154 beats per minute in the above example). Next, slow your intensity returning to your 63% maximum heart rate for another 5-minute session, repeat this 5 to 1, 5 to 1 minute interval until your desired time of exercise is finished. At the end of the session, cool down for a few minutes at a lower intensity before stopping.
Bottom Line: If your goal is to burn fat, implement an interval aerobic training program. Exercise at 63% of your maximum heart rate with periodic increases in intensity to between 75 to 88% of your maximum heart rate. Of course, only exercise if you are a physically able and have been cleared to do so by your doctor.
Type of Exercise (aerobic versus resistance training)
Both aerobic and resistance training (weight-lifting) are important forms of exercise that develop different systems and require various forms of fuels to sustain. As explained above, aerobic exercise performed at lower intensities burns more fat during the exercise, but when the intensity in increased more sugar is utilized. Resistance training is a high-intensity form of exercise and consequently requires the utilization of sugar rather than fat while performing the exercise, but during post-exercise recovery the amount of fat burned increases. So the question becomes how should one incorporate these types of exercises?
Is doing aerobic exercise combined with resistance training (weightlifting) performed in the same session (concurrent training) better than doing them separately on alternating days? Studies show, that doing resistance training alone is superior to aerobic exercise in burning fat calories within two hours post-exercise. This is known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) and represents the amount of oxygen utilized by the body to return to pre-exercise status - during this time period, body fat is broken down to supply the energy needed.
Researchers (7) also compared two exercise sessions: aerobic immediately (within 5-minutes) followed by resistance training and then resistance training immediately (within 5-minutes) followed by aerobic exercise. They concluded that doing aerobic immediately followed by resistance training was comparable to doing resistance training alone regarding EPOC. In other words, performing resistance training alone (separate session) and doing aerobic immediately followed by resistance were comparably effective in burning body fat, with a slight edge to resistance training alone. Regarding overall performance as measured by the physiological intended effects of aerobic exercise and resistance exercise, performing each type of exercise alone is superior than combining them into the same session. In other words, maximum results are achieved from resistance training when performed separately and on alternating days, and the same is true of aerobic exercise.
Resistance training routines should be designed based on individual ability, medical and fitness status, and should be adjusted and/or changed every 6 to 8 weeks reflecting progress. Incremental adjustments to exercise type, sequence, frequency, intensity and duration are critical in preventing muscle adaptation and "burnout," and allows for continued overall improvement.
Bottom Line: Overall, the only real advantage of doing concurrent exercise is time-efficiency. Otherwise, doing aerobic and resistance training separately and on alternating days is superior when considering fat burning (EPOC) potential and maximum exercise performance. Periodic adjustments based on individual progress are important to avoid muscle adaptation and to allow for continued metabolic and fitness improvement.