So you are overweight and have finally decided to do something effective about it. You will have to embrace fat burning exercise and your diet to achieve permanent weight loss.

Researchers agree that exercise has a bigger impact on fat loss and weight loss than diet. You can burn more fat in a day through exercise than you can through diet. However, they also agree that you must address both to lose fat.

Is There An Optimal Fat Burning Exercise Regimen?

There are two broad categories of exercise. Those categories are aerobic exercise and anaerobic exercise.

Aerobic exercise requires oxygen for energy; anaerobic does not. Another distinction between the two is level of intensity (degree of exertion). Aerobic exercise is a lower level of intensity.

Some examples of aerobic fat burning exercise are jogging, brisk walking, swimming and bike riding. Examples of anaerobic exercise are strength and resistance training or running a 100 meter or 200 meter race etc. Sport activities can be both aerobic and anaerobic. Some of the time you can be running at full tilt; at other times you are exerting yourself less so.

For optimum fat loss, it is advisable to do an exercise regimen that includes both aerobic and anaerobic activities.

Fat Burning Exercise: Burning Calories From Fat

Research from the American College of Sports Medicine shows that short, high-intensity aerobic sessions burn more calories than longer, lower-intensity aerobic workouts. If you jog at a pace of 8 miles per hour for 20 minutes, you could burn 300 calories. If you were to walk at a pace of 3 miles per hour for an hour, you would burn maybe 250 calories in total.

During a fat burning exercise session, your body goes through several stages before it reaches the point where you are burning fat. Initially you will only burn carbohydrates for energy. This lasts for approximately 10 minutes. Then you begin to burn fat for energy.

You will only begin to burn fat if you exert yourself to the right level for you. The right level for you has you exercising hard enough for your body to want more oxygen. How can you tell if it is the right level for you?

• you are breathing at a faster pace than is usual, but you are not gasping for air
• you may have some perspiration at the small of your back and at the back of your neck
• you should be able to carry on a conversation during your exercise. If you are breathless, or can’t talk, you are exercising too hard
• if you experience dizziness or lightheadedness, it is not a good sign. It means that you are overexerting yourself and you should stop

Your body will not begin to burn fat for energy, if you do not exert yourself sufficiently. It will continue to burn carbohydrates for energy. If this is what happens, you will lose mostly water weight, which leads to a decrease in your metabolism. This is the opposite of what you want, because the higher your metabolism the more fat you will burn.

Also please understand that just because you reached the fat burning stage does not mean you will stay there. Staying at the fat burning stage once again depends on if you are moving at a pace that is right for your body.