To lose weight and get in shape, you need to eat well and exercise regularly to burn fat. The first thing you need to understand about exercise is that just because you're burning calories doesn't mean you're burning fat. When you exercise, your main focus should be on losing body fat, and you can't lose body fat just by burning calories. When we exercise, our bodies start burning calories, but the calories burned are calories from carbohydrates in our system. In order to burn calories from stored fat, your body needs the presence of oxygen. There is a certain amount of oxygen your body needs to start burning fat, and the only way to gauge how much your own body needs is to keep up with your target heart rate during exercise. Please be aware that if you continue to burn calories from carbs alone, you will lose mostly "water weight" which will lower your metabolism. Also, think of the calories burned from carbs as your energy calories. If you lose too many energy calories, your muscles don't get enough energy to increase your metabolism, which indirectly burns fat. Therefore, you need to increase your calorie intake when you are on an exercise program to replace the energy calories burned. Burning fat calories during exercise During aerobic exercise, your body goes through several stages before it reaches the point where you burn fat. You will hear people say that in the first 10 minutes of exercise you only burn sugar (carbs), not fat. This is true to some extent. I say this because you will still be burning sugar after 10 minutes if you are not exercising hard enough to make your body want more oxygen; or you're exercising too hard and can't supply your body with enough oxygen to burn fat. When you exercise, you need to move at an even pace (not too fast, not too slow) so that your body uses your stored fat (not carbs or sugar) as an energy source. Also remember that just because you've reached the fat burning phase doesn't mean you're going to stay there. Again, staying in a fat burning phase depends on moving at a pace that is right for your body. Make sure you are in your target heart rate range. Burning fat calories at rest The only way you can continue to burn fat calories hours after you've finished exercising is through anaerobic weight training. Strength training is the key to burning fat at rest. Strength training is an anaerobic activity that causes you to burn more calories than aerobic exercise. The calories you burn during weight training are mostly carb calories (meaning you have to eat even more calories per day to get energy); but the calories you burn at rest are mostly fat calories. The reason you burn fat at rest is because strength training increases your metabolism, which uses your stored fat for energy. To make your body the perfect fat-burning machine, you need aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (strength training) exercise.
You are burning calories just sitting doing nothing. Calories are units of energy that keep you going, just like gasoline for cars. However, if you want to burn fat, particularly as part of a weight reduction program, you need to burn more calories than you consume each day. Storing Fat stores in your body consist of triglycerides. You'll also find triglycerides in your blood and cholesterol. Triglycerides form from fats and carbohydrates in your food; when you have a meal, the calories that are not used immediately are converted into triglycerides and stored in your fat cells for future use. To lose fat, you must use up more calories than you consume. Increasing your activity level is the best way to burn calories combined with a reduction in your daily calorie intake, which gives you fewer calories to burn off. ACE Fit points out that one pound of body fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories. To lose one pound per week, you need to burn an extra 500 calories daily. Removing Excess Fat While any exercise burns calories, not all exercise burns fat. During exercise, your body uses calories from carbohydrates first. Once these are used up, triglycerides are released from the fat stores, and you start burning fat. The key is to consistently consume fewer calories than you need if you want to burn fat until you've reached your weight goal. Even if you exercise, but still eat more calories than necessary, the excess calories will end up stored as triglycerides. Count Your Calories To calculate how many calories you need to burn in order to burn fat, you need to calculate how many calories you eat daily and your basal metabolic rate. Your BMR is the number of calories you need daily just to survive. Typically, it accounts for 60 to 75 percent of your daily calorie usage. The other 25 to 40 percent is burned by your activities. You can use a BMR calculator available Online -- the calculator will want to know your age, gender, height and weight. For example, a 25-year-old male, with a height of 5 feet 10 inches and weighing 160 pounds needs 1,717 calories daily, whereas a female with the same statistics needs 1,551 calories per day. Use the Harris Benedict formula to then calculate your total daily needs. This multiplies your BMR by an exercise-related factor. For example, the factor for sedentary people is 1.2 and for the extremely active 1.9. Activities to Burn Fat Any activity burns calories, but some forms of activity are better for burning fat, according to ACE Fit. High-intensity exercise, like an aerobics class, cycling or skiing, is better for burning calories and fat. Strength training is another method of burning excess calories to form muscle. Although you burn energy calories while lifting weights, you burn fat in the rest period immediately after. ACE Fit suggests 60 minutes of aerobic exercise daily for long-term weight control. Low intensity exercise, such as Pilates or yoga, will help tone your muscles but are not typically fat-burning.
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