Exercise for Fat Loss
If you go to any online forums on fat loss, you will find heated discussions on the proper exercises to lose fat. You will also find that people take extreme sides: some say that high intensity interval training (HIIT) is the only way to lose fat, while others swear by LSC (long, steady cardio).
But as in any area of life, extremism is not healthy.
The ideal would be to combine both high intensity, short duration exercises with lower intensity, long duration exercises. In this way, you develop both the anaerobic and aerobic systems, and you lose fat while exercising (long term cardio) and also afterwards, thanks to the high intensity exercise that speeds up your metabolism for hours on end.
So you should always try to combine the best of both worlds. But this is not as easy as it sounds. A lot of fitness enthusiasts overdo the high intensity exercises and end up with severe injuries. Others overdo the lower intensity exercises, running for hours and hours, while injuring themselves due to the repeated stresses on the joints from long, steady cardio.
A good rule of thumb is to do two high intensity sessions per week, and about three lower intensity sessions per week. You should consider your lower intensity sessions as active recovery from the high intensity exercises.
Of course, these recommendations will depend on your fitness level, age, and weight. Develop and adjust according to what your body tells you.
As for exercise selection, there are many ways to keep your workouts interesting. For high intensity exercises, you can try sprinting, kettlebell swings, weightlifting with short rest periods, sprint swimming, sprint cycling, boxing, and any other activity that gets your heart pumping hard.
As for lower intensity exercises, you can try walking, jogging, long-distance swimming, cycling, and any other activity that you can do for a long time without getting excessively tired.
But before you put on your running shoes or go out for a bike ride, you should know that you are missing a major form of exercise that is essential for fat loss. Do you know what you are missing?
Resistance exercise!
Most gym-goers think that weights are only good for bulking up, and are completely useless for losing fat.
Yet this is far from the truth! In fact, weights are essential for fat loss.
Why? If you just do cardio and follow a strict diet, you will lose fat, but you will also lose muscle. At the end of the day, you will end up feeling weak and tired.
But if you add resistance exercise to your fat loss arsenal, you will be able to keep all the muscle you have while losing mainly fat. As a result, when you begin to lose the fat, you will be pleased to find muscle underneath the layers of fat rather than bones!
If you are a newcomer to exercising, or you haven’t exercised in a long time, you might even gain some muscle while losing fat if you perform resistance exercises on a fat loss routine.
In conclusion, you should try to combine many forms of exercise into your fat loss routine:
- High intensity cardio to speed up your metabolism and mobilize fat stores.
- Long term cardio to burn fat while exercising.
- Resistance exercises to maintain the muscle you have, so that your metabolism doesn’t drop significantly. Maintaining muscle will ensure that all of the weight you lose is fat, and that you end up having an aesthetic physique once you lose all the fat that you need to lose.
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