Weight Loss Blog

Aerobics For Fat Loss

By Michael Russell

If you want to lose body fat, you need to burn more calories then you take in, in other words you need to create a calorie deficit. There are two ways of achieving this: reduce your calorie intake or increase how much calories you burn through exercise. The best way is actually to use both methods so your results can remain more permanent. Unlike what most people think, it is always better to eat more and exercise more rather than starving yourself. Starvation slows down the metabolism and actually burns fewer calories. Exercise increases the metabolism and helps to burn much more fat.

Aerobics really means "with oxygen," because it takes oxygen for fat to be burned and for oxygen to be used, the aerobic exercise must be held for an extended period of time. Aerobics is a cardiovascular activity, which is why most people refer it to cardio.

There are different intensity levels when doing aerobics. Lots of people are convinced that low intensity exercises are the ultimate way to losing fat. When doing low intensity aerobics, the body tends to use the body's fat as energy whereas when doing high intensity aerobics, the body uses carbohydrates for its energy needs. But if this were the case then everyone would be sleeping twelve hours a day to burn fat. Sleeping is a very low intensity activity, but it barely burns any calories. Overall at the end of the day you don't burn enough calories to really affect fat loss. At high intensity aerobics, such as sprinting, the body uses carbs as the primary fuel source for energy, but it also burns a lot more calories and helps by actually increasing the metabolism.

The duration of aerobic exercise is very important, the longer you maintain the work out, the more calories you'll burn and in the end the more fat you'll lose. The best way for effective fat loss is using a combination of low intensity and high intensity exercises. Low intensity exercises should last from 30 to 45 minutes and work best first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. High intensity exercises should last as long as you can but no more than 30 minutes, but an hour or two after a meal which contains carbs would be best to give you the energy needed to finish the work out.

Depending on your goals, you should always do three aerobic exercises per week as a minimum. Its part of a healthy lifestyle that will help you in the long run and also keep your body fat low. Most cardiovascular exercise equipment these days have a heart rate monitor that you attach onto a finger and also track the number of calories you're burning. Everyone's heart rate is different because of their height, weight and age. So the number of calories shown on the screen isn't always accurate. As a guide line it is important to remember that if you're breathing heavier than normal then you're generally in your target zone, but should not be breathing too heavily in a way that you wouldn't be able to speak a full sentence. With these guidelines you should be burning those extra fats in no time.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Aerobics.

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Labels: aerobics, cardio, exercise, fat loss

Aerobics For Fat Loss
was posted by Rob @ 11/05/2006 06:30:00 AM | Discuss this post or any other in my Weight Loss Forum