Most Effective Exercise for Fat Loss
Many hold the wrong assumption that calorie-reduction is all that’s needed for fat loss. This explains why a lot of individuals believe that crash dieting is the answer to their fat loss issues. Again, they mistakenly hold that going on self-imposed near starvation is all that’s needed to make them lose weight.
Unfortunately, this hurts more than it helps. The metabolic rate is slowed to such a degree that when dieters go back to their normal eating habits, the effect is more weight gain– usually with more pounds put on compared to what they had initially wanted to lose in the first place.
Studies have shown that while it is correct to say that you can lose weight by reducing your caloric intake, you cannot rely on this as your sole method of weight loss. In fact, data from the National Weight Control Registry shows that of the 6,000 participants traced for their efforts to lose weight, majority were able to reach their desired weight loss goals through the combined efforts of diet and exercise.
More studies have also shown that initial weight loss can be kept for the long term through regular physical activity. In these studies, individuals who only went on a diet without the exercise were not very happy to realize that they have put on weight over time.
All exercises contribute to calorie-burning and as such, there is no single exercise that can really help you lose the excess pounds. However, running, jogging, walking and other forms of cardiovascular exercise still rank first in terms of burning overall levels of body fat.
An 8 mile per hour run burns approximately anywhere from 900 calories to 1400 calories per hour depending on your body weight, says Mayo Clinic. Jogging, meanwhile, melts around 500 to 800 calories per hour while simply walking at 2 miles per hour torches 200 to 300 calories.
Rollerblading, meanwhile, torches 900 to 1,300 calories, rope jumping anywhere from 730 to 1000 calories while basketball burns 500 to 800 calories.
To keep muscles from sagging once all the fats have been burned, make sure that you do strength training exercises for at least thirty minutes twice a week so you an tone your muscles. You might find more sophisticated equipment in the gym for this purpose but you can still tone your body at home.
Doing pull ups, push ups and squats as well as other bodyweight exercises can also help develop a lean physique. Just make sure that you increase to appropriate intensity your amount of exercise as necessary for the best results. Stretching exercises done for ten minutes after your cardio workouts for at least three times a week works to elongate your muscles and make them lean, firm and toned.
Keep in mind that the key to a successful melting of the excess pounds at the most healthy pace does not depend in a single exercise but in a combination of cardio exercises, strength training and flexibility exercises.
Lastly, don’t forget to look at our in-depth P90X results and this blog post about Shakeology.