Aerobic Exercise For Weight Loss
Walk into a gym these days and you’ll most likely see more steppers, treadmills and elliptical trainers than any other machine. At busy times it’s always hard to get a machine, but are they effective? Does their popularity indicate they are the best machines to improve general fitness and burn body fat?
You’d be forgiven for thinking so, but it’s not neccessarily so. Aerobic exercise can be a wonderful tool for the educated exerciser, but may be ineffective in the longer term for the average person who wants to lose fat. Click on the link and you can check out the tips I discovered on the most effective way to lose fat.
In order to burn fat, the body must have used up its prefered muscle fuel, glycogen (the processed glucose it has already stored in your muscles for anticipated work). It takes nearly half an hour of effort for you and me to burn enough of their stored glycogen that the fat burning process can begin. Once the glycogen is used up, fat burning can take place, but only if the exercise is paced correctly. The fat burning zone discussed by the aerobic exercise community is attained by maintaining the heartbeat at a steady, elevated rate equal to (220-Your_Age) x 0.75. This gives an approximate value for your heart rate based on your age that must be maintained if the body is to begin using fat as a fuel. You’ll achieved the desired effect of fat loss if you maintain that steady pace on your fat burning machine. But, and it’s a huge but, most people don’t use aerobic exercise routines or machines in that way. In fact most people hop on a treadmill or elliptical for 40 minutes then leave the club (hopefully not via the bar or cafe) feeling they’ve done something good. Admittedly they have burnt off some of those extra calories that might have been transformed into fat, but that assumes the exercise took place within 20 minutes of the last meal. For most people aerobic exercise will be a waste of time, resulting in nothing more than a few pounds shed in the first 2 weeks followed by a crash and burn weight loss plateau 2 weeks later.
Fortunately there are ways you can burn fat very successfully using aerobic workout machines. The secret is to stop fighting your body’s glycogen stores and exercise at the best time for natural fat burning to take place. Try these tips for accelerated weight loss.
Perform aerobic exercise as soon as you wake up in the morning. Your body is in the prefect condition to burn fat since stored glycogen levels are very low after sleep. Getting into the fat burning zone before breakfast will burn large amounts of fat that you will notice on the scale and in the way your clothes fit.
Use short, sharp weight training routines before your aerobic workout. Don’t be one of those people who use aerobics to warm up for weight routines. It’s not just the fact that warm up before weight training isn’t desirable if the goal is weight loss, the aerobic session will use up all of the glycogen in your muscles, making them feel tired long before actual muscle exhaustion. If the aerobics routine is performed after the weight training portion, the body will have depleted glycogen and a steady pace in the fat burning zone will burn fat-guaranteed.
To really supercharge your weight loss efforts and get rid of the fat for good, combine a sensible diet with weight training and moderate low impact aerobics and you will be unstoppable.
If you’ve been trying to lose some fat for a while, see my tips on exercise motivation for some wonderful news.