When you talk about losing weight, what you’re really saying is that you want to lose fat. After all, who cares what a number on a scale says if it’s all lean, toned muscle? Plus, a good muscle to fat ratio is good for your wellbeing, especially if you achieve this physique through safe and effective exercise. The best exercises for burning fat follow the premise of burning the most calories in the shortest period of time. However, burning too many calories can interfere with your workout wellness, making you feel lethargic and totally unenthusiastic about exercise. If this happens, you can say bye bye to buff and trim and hello to bulge, so which exercises can give you great results, whilst leaving a little in the tank for next time?
1. Jogging or Walking: The great thing about walking or jogging there’s no excuse for not doing it. Whether you live in a big city or in the middle of nowhere surrounded by vast open fields, whether you’re a fitness freak or a couch potato, and whether you can afford a pricey gym membership or you haven’t got two tenners to rub together, anyone can go for a walk or jog. You can go walking or jogging anywhere at any time, and the beauty of it is that you can continually build upon your progress, increasing the level of intensity or distance you go as your fitness levels improve. All you need to do is introduce a moderately sloped hill to your route, walk with heavier weights, or simply go a bit faster, and as soon as a route gets boring you can change it up and explore new areas. This variety explains why walking and jogging are some of the best fat-burning exercises, as long as you keep pushing yourself to the next level every week.
2. Circuit Training: Of all the fat-burning exercises, circuit training is the most hard-hitting. Minute by minute, circuit training burns more calories than any other cardio vascular exercise, which makes it perfect for shedding that unwanted blubber. The problem with this, as opposed to walking or jogging, is that it can be a lot for a beginner to take on, so it may be useful to research the best methods of circuit training before you get started, or, even better, consult a trainer who can help you come up with an individualised, fat-burning routine. If you’re serious about burning off that body fat, you should be aiming to include one or two circuit training sessions in your every weekly workout routine but, again, if you’re just starting out you may have to build up to this point.
3. Cross Training: Although this involves going to the gym or forking out for your own cross trainer, this exercise is still worth pursuing if you seriously want to shed those pounds. The pushing and pulling of the handles and foot rests gives you a total upper and lower body workout, which helps to strengthen your muscles, improve your heart health and, as you may have guessed, provide a good means of burning calories to target body fat.
4. Swimming: Like cross training, swimming works all the areas of your body but, unlike cross training, it’s a lot more cost effective (especially if you live by the sea). This low-impact cardio exercise is great because you hardly realise you’re exercising, as a dip in the pool or sea refreshes you body and mind, and makes you forget you’re sweating off unwanted fat. Plus, it takes far less time to recover from swimming than any of the above activities (with maybe the exception of walking) which means you won’t be aching come the morning, and will be ready to hit the pool again in no time.
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