10 Fat Burning Activities

Your genes, hormones, age, eating habits, and lifestyle, effects where you store fat from extra calories. For some people those areas are the belly, thighs, arms, and/or the hips and butt.

Understanding how your body utilizes fat is important when setting a goal to lose extra fat in the body. We all get energy from fat, carbohydrates, and proteins. When exercising, the body primarily uses fat and carbs for energy, while proteins are used for muscle repair after exercising.

A simple way to look at energy is to know that when doing high-intensity workouts, the body will use carbs for fuel more than fat because the metabolic pathways available to break down carbs for energy are more efficient than the pathways available to break down fat. Therefore, when doing lower-intensity exercises, the body uses more fat for energy than carbs.

But, aside from looking at energy, when it comes to weight loss, the important thing is burning calories. In other words, the harder you work, the more calories you will burn. I would recommend doing a high-intensity workout, specifically cardio, twice a week for weight loss. I wouldn't recommend doing more than two days of high intensity exercises every week because you want to avoid overtraining your muscles, burnout mentally and physically, and inconsistency. The other days can be used for target muscles, improving endurance, and recovery.

Below are 10 activities that you can do as your cardio regimen and still enjoy the workout. Each of these activities can be performed at high and low intensities, which I would recommend exercising no longer than 20-30 minutes for the high intensity days.

1. Boxing

2. Dancing

3. Hiking

4. Bicycling

5. Swimming

6. Running and Walking Trails

7. Jump Rope

8. Tennis

9. Soccer

10. Stair Climbing

As always, please be sure to do a solid warm-up and stretch routine for at least 15 minutes before you start any workout to reduce risk of injury. A cool down including a stretch routine post-workout is also necessary for reducing the risk of injury and muscle cramping.