Changing your eating habits and following our fat burning moves will help you blast away calories, but regular cardio is also essential for weight loss. Here’s how to train to burn fat.
Cardio will help you burn fat, it’s that simple. It will raise your heart rate, burn calories and help elevate your metabolic rate so that you burn more calories after you’ve been exercising. You don’t have to do hours of cardio each time you work out, but it is advisable to aim for a total amount of 150 minutes per week. You can break this down however want. Five lots of 30 minutes per week is fine, or six lots of 25 minutes per week. If you have a particularly busy day, you don’t have to do your entire cardio quota all at once. You can do three lots of ten minutes instead of one 30-minute block if it helps.
Whether you’re running, rowing or cycling, be sure to do some interval training to push yourself and burn more calories. This means working out at a high intensity for a specified period of time, then having a rest period where you keep exercising but at a moderate intensity to give you time to recover. During the higher intensity intervals, you should feel like you’re working hard and only be able to speak a few words.
Examples of interval sessions
5-minute warm-up
1-minute fast
1-minute fast
Repeat up to a total of 20-25 minutes
5-minute cool-down
Best types of cardio exercise for burning fat
Running
Rowing
Cross-trainer
These work the muscles of the upper and lower body
Best types of exercise classes for burning fat
Circuit training
Spinning
HIIT classes
Boxercise
Kettlebells
If you’re doing lower intensity exercise, aim for a higher volume. So for instance, if you decide to lose weight by walking, an hour’s walking per day would be ideal, but remember you can spread it out across the day, so you could for instance try three 20-minute chunks.
