Melt the fat!

In the previous post, we discussed ways to burn fat through nutrition. The main point is changing the caloric balance, either by decreasing food (as explained here), or by increasing activity. Today, we will be talking about the latter.

My recommendation as you might know is: three weight sessions and three aerobic (running) sessions weekly. These activities burn a lot of calories of course, but they also have many other benefits that contribute indirectly to fat loss.

Weight training builds muscle (to be precise, in periods of diet and fat loss, it doesn’t build muscle but helps maintain it). This fact, along with profound changes in appearance, helps in another very important aspect: it improves the metabolism. That’s because muscle is active tissue. It constantly burns calories, either during work or during rest.

Aerobic training improves endurance and makes the body more efficient in burning fat. In addition, this activity relies mostly on fat for fuel, and thus we hope it will directly burn bodyfat (especially if we follow these guidelines).

For all these reasons, I recommend you do an aerobic activity every day. However, since this would be tough on the body (and the risk of overtraining higher), intense sessions should be limited to 4-5 weekly, and the rest should be devoted to fast walking. An example follows:
Monday: running
Tuesday: running
Wednesday: fast walking
Thursday: running
Friday: fast walking
Saturday: running
Sunday: fast walking (or rest)

This technique is called active rest and it’s immensely effective. The key is to avoid exertion on the walking days, i.e. don’t come to a point where you are breathing heavily. You should however take more time. If you run for 20 minutes, you should fast-walk for 30-45 minutes.

Weight sessions remain at three per week. This number is ideal for muscle maintenance.

Hurry up, two months left!