FAT part 3 :: How to Burn it!

Fat is one of the three Macronutrients our bodies can use as energy (the other two macronutrients are carbohydrates and protein). You can actually train your body to use fat as the primary energy source. Fat is what accumulates around our waist, hips or thighs. If we can utilize this same fat as energy, we will have much less of it.

As you may already know, we burn more calories moving than by sitting all day. Find an activity you like and do it on a regular basis. The regularity (at least 1x/week) and familiarity of an exercise is what will allow you to get more efficient using fat as energy. The following are tips to help you understand how our bodies access fat:

1. Become good at burning fat! Practice burning calories and get a good aerobic base by doing some sort of cardiovascular exercise on a regular basis/most days of the week (start out slow and build up). Lance Armstrong is particularly good at this. His aerobic base is really high---he can cycle at 170bpm and burn 70-80% of his energy sources from fat (instead of carbohydrates or lean muscle tissue/protein). I suggest starting with 20 minutes at 50-60% of your maximum and working your way up to 45-60 minutes at 65-75% of your maximum. Focus on your posture. If you are unable to keep your posture, there is a good chance you are not burning primarily fat.
   
2. Interval train! Interval training has an affect on the endocrine system that low intensity training does not. Higher intensity bouts of exercise (70 to 85/95% of your max) will help you to burn more calories and fat. Try equal work:to:recovery cardio bouts. Start with 30 seconds of exercise to 30 seconds of recovery. Work your way up to 5 minutes of exercise and 5 minutes of recovery. Then repeat for 20-30 minutes :)
   
3. Strength Train! Lift some weights, that's right... Increase your lean body tissue/muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn throughout the day. The best way to burn calories during and after a workout is to lift heavy... Yeah, that's right, it will do the most for your metabolism. More than yoga, more than pilates, and you bet; more than Tai-Chi ;) I suggest getting comfortable with your weight training program and lifting for 10-15 reps the first 2 weeks, then progressively working down to 6-8 repetitions with exercises that you have mastered.
   
4. Do not eat so often! Haha... Its true though. Why is everyone trying to eat 5-6 meals/day? Fitness Models do this, but do you know what they eat? Chicken breast, dry brown rice and broccoli, is that what you are eating 5-6x's/day? I think not. We need not do that! It is OK to teach ourselves to learn how to run off of fat storage. This happens after our sugars run low. We all burn a mix of carbohydrate and fat. The less food we have in our system the better chance we have to burn fat. Three meals a day or 2000 calories is more than enough food for most of the sedentary population.

In summary, if you have one hour to workout and you would like to lose fat, do the following: lift for 30 minutes, follow that with 30 minutes of cardio. Or interval train for 20-30 minutes and follow that by weight lifting. Everyone is different. So please find what works best for you and go with it. The above are just suggestions based on years of science.