While, cardio and building muscles are two of the best ways to burn fat, they need to be complemented by avoiding bad eating habits. So, along with a healthy diet, to truly lose fat, you need weight training and spurts of intense cardio associated with sweat.
Cardio
Most of all, cardio exercises like running or even using ellipticals, first use blood glucose to get energy quickly. And, after that is depleted, the bodygets energy from fat cells.
Timing
Now, when you first wake up in the morning, your blood glucose levels are likely the lowest. As a result, doing cardio workouts in the morning, before breakfast, will quickly go through the depleted blood glucose before getting to the fat stores for energy. On the other hand, doing cardio during other parts of the day, blood glucose levels are higher. As a result, it takes longer to use up blood glucose before hitting the fat stores.
Moreover, exercise in the morning burns 20 percent more fat. In fact, research in the British Journal of Nutrition says you have least glycogen from carbs before breakfast and so the body has no choice but to burn fat.
Furthermore, cardio increases your metabolic rate and it stays elevated anywhere from 60 minutes to 12 hours depending on the intensity and duration of the cardio. Also, this increased metabolic rate results in burning more calories throughout the day.
Duration
Meanwhile, instead of slowly building up intensity, start with two to threeminutes warm-up, then go all out for 15 to 20 minutes before slowing down for the last ten to twenty minutes. As a result, you burn significantly more fat. On the other hand, some may findit hard to go all out for 15 to 20 minutes. So, instead of going all out, do short intervals of very intense cardio, that cause you to sweat, interspersed with intervals of low intensity cardio.
Meanwhile, do at least 30 minutes of cardio three to fourtimes a week. By the way, instead of one 30-minute cardio session daily, a better alternative may be to havetwo 15-minute cardio sessions daily. For example, onecardio session in the morning and one later in the day.
Intensity
Also, various studies have reported that, when it comes to weight loss, short, high-intensity cardio sessions are key. In fact, a University of Western Ontario research showed that doing four to six, 30-second high intensity sprints burned more fat than 60minutes ofslow cardio.
So, try a high-intensitysprint of 20 seconds followed by 40 seconds of an easier cardio on any piece of cardio equipment for five minutes.
Sweat
By the way, sweating by itself doesn’t burn fat. However, it’s an indicator that you are exercising with enough intensity to burn fat and significant calories.
Building Muscles
Insight
First and foremost, there are two types of muscles.
- First, there are the Type 1 slow-twitch muscle fibersthat control endurance and are used for activities like long distancerunning. Meanwhile, the Type 1 fibers remain the same size even after exercising.
- Next, there are the Type 2 fast-twitch muscle fibers that are used for shorter explosive movements like high intensity sprints. However, the fast-twitch fibers tire quickly and need more time to recover. But, the Type 2 fibers get larger as they get stronger and burn up more fat.
Warm Up
Above all, before starting your weight training session, do five to ten minutes of cardio. In fact, doing cardio gets your muscles warmed up. Besides, depending on the intensity, the cardio can burn an additional 50 to 150 calories.
Duration
Most of all, do 30 minutes of weight trainingthree or four times a week. By the way, weight training will not burn body fat during the training. However, it will burn fat during the rest of the day and night.
Next, during any of the weight training sessions, only work on two muscle groups at a time. Therefore, in a week you will have worked on six muscle groups (3 days x 2 muscle groups each day).
By the way, exercise for 1 hour three for four times a week. The one hour includes 30 minutes of cardio (for instance, in the morning) and 30 minutes of weight training (for instance, in the evening). Indeed, such a schedule changes gene expression, which in turn, causes the body to remove fat from the blood stream.
Weight Training
Most of all, weight training not only strengthens muscles you already have, but also adds more lean muscle mass. Which, in turn, burns morefat when you are resting.
Also, to get the most out of weight training use the most weights that stretch your capability. Doing this will cause your muscles to grow with time. And as they grow, more fat is burned, even when you are resting.
Now, muscles need fuel to move and the best source of that fuel is fat containing 9 calories per gram. Meanwhile carbohydrates contain only 4 calories per gram.So, when you increase physical intensity the muscles first get energyby burning carbs because they are quicker to break down and create energy. Moreover, you want to burn as many calories as possible so that the body is forced to use fat to help muscles recover.
Grow Muscles
Next, the best way to build lean muscle mass is by lifting weights or doing bodyweight exercises until you can’t do any more. Consequently, your muscle fibers get the message that they need to grow.By the way, you can reach this state by either increasing weightsorby doing more reps with less weight.
But, take small breaks between sessions so that your muscles can build themselves back up stronger than before. Which, in turn, further eats away at your fat.
Regrettably, during this process of growing muscles, there is always the likelihood that you may overdo it and you end up with sore muscles. Sore muscles can be massaged so that they recover faster.
Post Workout
Next, after a weight training session, eat carbs and proteins withintwo hours.Above all, carbs replenish glycogen stores while amino acids in protein help repair muscles, so that they get stronger the next time you exercise. Finally, eat twice as many carbs as proteins in this two-hour window.
