Best Way To Burn Fat
It seems every week that there is a new way to shed pounds and get slim, especially when it comes time for people to start trying on spring and summer fashions. The trends come and go, but those who are committed to losing weight know that there is no substitute for high-intensity exercise. Ultimately, the best way to burn fat is to push your heart rate to its maximum for the longest duration you are able to. If you only reach your maximum for a brief amount of time, you will likely burn the calories you have consumed that day; if you push yourself harder, you start to burn the calories you have stored in days and weeks past.
A person's maximum heart rate is easy to calculate. Simply take 220 beats per minute, or three times the average resting heart rate, and subtract your age. Ideally, you should be able to push yourself upwards of 150 beats per minute, the ideal fat burning zone for cardiovascular exercise. Half the trick of slimming down is to hit this zone, while the other half is to keep it there for an extended period of time. You may have heard about people who drop a large amount of weight in a short amount of time, such as magazine and commercial testimonials who claim to have lost ten pounds in a single week, but that is mostly water weight and does nothing to improve your fitness.
It is important not to push your body too far when you begin a high-intensity training program. If you start off from a basis of getting very little exercise, or no exercise whatsoever, do not try to push yourself past about a half an hour per day, and take a day off to recover. As you progress, increase your exertion by about ten minutes per week until you are doing an hour per day. The hour limit is the key, as you only rely on body fat for ten to thirty percent of your energy if you work out for less than an hour. Once you go further, however, you have less in your stomach to consume and will rely on body fat for as much as seventy percent of your energy. If you have enough time and determination, you can push it to an hour and a half or even two hours a day, and you will begin to burn nothing but body fat to provide energy. At that rate, you can easily lose two or three pounds of pure fat in a week.
It should be noted that high-intensity exercise is the best way to lose weight, but that other lifestyle choices need to be taken into effect. Diet is most obvious, as you cannot burn fat if you replace it immediately with an unhealthy meal. Drink a gallon of water for every hour you exercise or your body will quickly become dehydrated. Ensure that you get eight hours of sleep or else your metabolism starts to become inconsistent in processing meals.