Fat Burning Workouts

Everyone has different fitness goals whether you want to lose weight, gain weight, or maintain your weight, burning fat is a common goal. Burning fat is optimal to having a healthy and lean body. Keep in mind that fat is first burned in the last place that you gained it. Typically your problem areas, that accumulate the most fat, are the last places that you lose from because it is the first place that you gain it. It's important to know your body type and determine if your problem areas consist of visceral fat or subcutaneous fat and to acknowledge the difference between the two. Also everyone has different shapes and body types, you have to experiment and find what works best for you.

From my experience the best exercises for fat loss are resistance workouts. Using your body weight with added resistance promotes fat burn and lean muscle mass. Resistance bands are great for targeting your problem areas. Resistance bands come in multiple sizes and weight ranges for light, medium, and heavy resistance. These bands can be used for arm and leg exercises. A great way to burn inner thigh fat is to put a band around your mid thighs and do side step squats, and box squats which will also help shape the booty! You can get these on Amazon.com for anywhere between 10 and 30 dollars.

Another resistance workout that I see major results with is using a Pilates machine. This is a splurge price wise but it's well worth it. The machine features a sliding bench that you lay on while pushing off of a trampoline or a bar with your feet. The machine works on resistance bands that are attached to the bench that you slide on, using your own body weight along with the resistance to tone and shape your entire body. There are multiple ways to use this giving you a full leg and ab workout which is provided with books on how to use the machine and to target certain areas.

If you don't have a Pilates machine or plan on investing in one, Yogilates (yoga + pilates) is a great way to increase fat burn. Yogilates consists of doing basic yoga poses with cardio movement. This is all based on body weight training and will get you lean and slim because yoga poses elongate the muscles while cardio burns fat. Moving through the yoga poses with repetition is what Yogilates is all about. I highly suggest looking into different at home videos by Jillian Michaels or any fitness coach you like!

The last fat burning exercise is timed cardio. What I mean by "timed" is setting a time frame for an obstacle of choice and alternating between exercises with a short break in between them. For example; doing jumping jacks for 60 seconds, jump squats for 60 seconds, burpees for 60 seconds, take a two minute break and then repeat the set three times. Giving yourself a short break in between helps you to breathe and keep your energy up. When you're trying to burn fat it's so important to remember to breathe throughout your sets and exercises to promote calories burn instead of bulking. Another set example to burn fat is doing 25 lunges on each side, 25 mountain climbers, and 25 bicycle crunches, take a two minute break and then repeat three times and accomplish one set as fast as you can, monitoring your speed. Adding weights into your sets and alternating with and without the weight will increase calorie burn and promote lean muscle. Doing multiple sets as a 20 minute workout is a good way to increase your heart rate and work up a sweat!

xx Alyssa