All of us want to burn more fats than we can for our own benefits. Our body usually burns a mix of carbohydrates and fat to fuel our daily activities. How much carbohydrates and fats our body burns depends on our daily physical activity and how much and what we eat. If we eat less and do more exercise and other physical activities, our body will burn more fats and carbohydrates. It will even consume the protein in our body to fuel our body.

Our body always burns fats and carbohydrates but it depends on how much physical activities we do. It is only natural that if we exercise more, our body will burn more fats than usual and by doing that, we maintain our sexy figure and keep our body healthy. That is most likely hitting two birds with one stone.

We can burn fats more effectively by doing a slow and long duration types of exercise like walking, running, jogging, weightlifting, cycling and swimming. These exercises involve most of the major muscle groups. What you need to remember is that if we use more muscle groups in our body, we can burn more fats in our body. Also, our body will burn more calories from fat from lower intensity cardio exercises. Here are some of the best fat burning exercises that will help you discard those unwanted flabs.

• Walking is the most convenient exercise for us. We can do this any time and anywhere. We can do this in any time of the year. Walking is the easiest and suitable exercise for those who don’t like exercising. If we try to walk at a fast pace, we can burn up to 180 calories in just thirty minutes!

• Cycling and running are great too. We can do this either at home through a machine or outside while enjoying our surroundings and the gush of fresh air. This type of exercise really increases the amount of calories that our body can burn. Our body can burn up to 200 – 400 calories in thirty minutes. Running is just like walking except for the fact that it actually burns more fats than walking. We can burn up to 300 calories in just thirty minutes. Amazing isn’t it?

• We can also do some weightlifting. Aside from burning our calories in the body, it gives us those awesome abs and lovely figure and it also boost our self-confidence and self-esteem. If you can do it right, every muscle in our body can burn up to 50 – 60 calories per day. It’s two in one right?

Exercising at a moderate pace for quite some time has a lasting effect in the body and to our health. This process offers us a lot of benefits. Also, exercise which involves most of the muscle groups in our body increases our metabolism which means that we will burn calories even after our exercise. By exercising regularly, we can increase the fat burning enzymes in our body.

You can get more enzymes working to deliberately burn your fats by doing fat burning exercises for twenty minutes. You can start by doing it three days a week and later on do it five days a week. For best result, try to suit your fat burning exercises with your daily diet.

Benefits of Strength Training

The strength training has a lot benefits. It really increases our muscular strength and our endurance. It also enhances our muscle tone and improves our cardiovascular fitness. Moreover, our body’s metabolism increases too as the muscles that burn the fats in our body increases. Having stronger muscles means we have a healthy and fit body. We can achieve that by undergoing the strength training. This exercise improves our posture and keeps us from getting injuries in our daily activities as it gives better support in our joints. Also, according to some review, older people who do the strength training can avoid the loss of their muscle tissue and so they become less frail. Likewise, they might be able to prevent some physical disability like osteoporosis.

It also helps maintain good flexibility as our body will be able to resist the stresses from injury by increasing our muscle strength with the help of strength training. As the strength training includes standard aerobic exercise, running or cycling may be the best. It helps our body use oxygen more efficiently and also make our heart and lungs healthy. For beginners, you can do these exercises three times a week for thirty minutes every day. When you get used to it, try to increase it by doing it five times a day. Aside from strengthening your body and improving your flexibility, it helps you obtain your desired body figure.

Weightlifting: A Great Way of Strength Training

Many people cannot see the difference between strength training to power lifting and competitive bodybuilding. Strength training is an exercise while power lifting and competitive bodybuilding are sports. In this exercise, you are using your muscles to stop gaining extra pounds in your weight. By having your muscles work harder than usual, the muscle mass in your body will strengthen and increases.

Most people try weightlifting as part of their strength training. Before you actually do weightlifting, you must start first with body weight exercises for a few weeks like pull-ups, pushups and sit-ups. You must only do weightlifting about three times a week and try to do it every other day.

You must warm up first for up to ten minutes before doing weightlifting to prepare your body. Also, be sure not to spend more than forty minutes in weightlifting to avoid boredom or fatigue and make sure that you are using the right techniques with proper supervision. The improper training may cause you injuries particularly in your back and joints. And try to rest for ten minutes after each session. You can do stretching while you rest.

Strength training is a great way to improve your figure, strength and endurance. You can get better result by doing weightlifting and aerobic exercises together. Weightlifting keeps your body healthy while aerobic exercise will keep your heart and lungs at good condition. Just remember that anything excessive is not good for your body.

Far too many people overlook the many health and fitness benefits that weight training has to offer, and because of this, experience problems down the road with their body such as decreased bone density, a slowed metabolic rate, increased stress levels and other negative consequences that are associated with constant stress.

Increased Bone Density

Weight lifting, being one of the best weight bearing exercises you can do, will increase your bone density and help ward off osteoporosis or stress fractures in the future.

Many people think running is the best exercise for increasing bone density, but this isn’t necessarily true. If the truth is told, running actually promotes muscle breakdown in the body, while weight lifting, being an anabolic process, helps to promote the building of tissues.

Therefore, weight lifting is going to be much better at preserving your bone mass, not to mention it’s far less impact than going for an hour run.

Decreased Frequency of Injuries

When you strength train, not only are your muscles going to get stronger, but you’ll also work the ligaments and tendons that are connecting bones, muscles, and other tissues, thus reducing the chance they become injured when participating in other physical activities.

If you’ve ever been injured, you know just how frustrating this can be. In about 80% of all injury cases, the injury is a direct result of a tendon, ligament, or muscle not being strong enough when a stressful force is applied.

Since weight training will really hit all those deep tendons and ligaments, it’s the best injury prevention out there.

Reduction of Health Related Risks

Numerous studies have demonstrated that regular weight training can have a positive effect on health by showing reductions in the rate of insulin resistance, blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer.
If you couple a solid weight training program then with a well-thought out diet, you’ll be putting your best foot forward at warding off these chronic problems

Prevention of Fat Gain

The more you weight lift, the higher your metabolism will be, thus the more food you can eat while maintaining your weight. If that isn’t good news for your future and the fight against body fat, I’m not sure what is.

Now, with all of this said, one big problem many people run into is the thinking pattern that using a muscle building program will make you big and bulky.

This is most certainly not the case.

Let’s look at an analogy to gain an understanding of this.

Pretend you have two teams and each are going to try and build a house using the exact same building technique.

One team is given 10,000 bricks to construct this house, and the second team is given only 1,000 bricks.

Who’s going to build the bigger house?

The choice should be obvious – team one since they have more bricks to build it with.

Now, think of those bricks as being the calories you put into your body. Unless you’re supplying enough calories, you aren’t going to build really big muscles. This is precisely what makes bodybuilders look like bodybuilders.

It’s not just about the way they train, but more about the way they eat (if you’ve ever had a teenage son in the growing process in your house, you likely know just how much food must be consumed when growing at rapid rates).

Whether it’s growing in height during puberty or trying to build bigger muscles later on, calories must be supplied for this growth process to take place.

You can’t build a house out of nothing. Likewise, you can workout all you want, but if those building blocks – in the form of amino acids, carbohydrates, and dietary fats are not there, you aren’t going to see too much muscle growth.

So, don’t get caught thinking that just because you add weight lifting to your workouts, you’re going to develop large bulky muscles. If you control your diet, this simply will not happen.

So, hopefully it is clear now that just because you’re weight lifting, it does not mean you will end up with bulky muscles as a result. Many people make this incorrect assumption – but it really is the diet that makes all the difference in how this weight lifting will shape your body.

When you make the decision to work with me using my 6-Pack Ab Quest program, I’ll take you through the weight lifting and ab techniques that will provide maximum results with minimal effort on your part (why spend more time in the gym than you have to?), as well as provide you with meal plans that are custom designed to ensure you get the best results from your training without the muscle bulk – in fact, the plans are formulated to help you shed the fat so you look leaner and more defined.

Not choosing to include weight training as part of your current workout program is without-a-doubt the biggest mistake you could make as far as your long-term health and fitness level is concerned. Don’t let this exercise pass you by any longer.

Vince DelMonte is the author of No Nonsense Muscle Building: Skinny Guy Secrets To Insane Muscle Gain found at www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com

For Vince DelMonte’s Complete Set
Of No-Nonsense Muscle Building System, CLICK HERE!

1. Straight leg sit ups - The reason why this is a wrong kind of exercise movement is because of the shearing forces applied on the vertebrae as well as the spinal discs in case you have a flexed and rounded spine. By doing this, it is likely that the pressure is put in the small area of the disc area that can lead to small ruptures. The best thing that you can do to train abs is to opt for the brace and hollow method which is a basic isometric exercise which can strengthen the abs.
2. Straight legged raise – It is very likely that you come across this routine during high school gym class wherein someone is allowed to hold your feet while your knees are locked and the legs are fixed into the floor while you try to perform a wide number of situps. This is actually wrong because doing straight legged situps while your feet are stabilized will create an undue pressure within your lower spine and the movement you do in order to lift yourself from the floor may lead to injury.
3. Electronic ab stimulator – This can be found on many infomercials. In order to establish whether the use of this gadget is for real, many researches were done. In a nutshell, these researches found out that no significant improvements were seen and some people may find that they are already suffering from painful consequences because of too much use of this item. The machine is also available for a very high price!
4. Ab rocker – There are those people who actually get good results from the use of this tool. Do not be fooled though because research found out that this tool is not really helpful when it comes to the rectus abs and oblique abs workout.
   
5. Two-dumbbell side bends – Although this can target the obliques once done properly but you should understand that holding a couple of dumbbells actually negates resistance.
6. Hanging leg raises – You do this by hanging yourself from a bar while your back is arched then you try to raise your legs. The problem with this is that most of the stress is transferred into the hip flexors thus straining your spine in the end.
7. Neck barbell presses – you do this by raising the barbell and then lowered it while positioned at the back of your head hence leading for the head to protrude forward while the shoulders would retract back wards.
8. Poorly timed stretches - Although stretching is vital before and after exercises, wrongly done one can actually lead to muscle injury or worse, bone fracture so be very wary.
9. Crunches or sit-ups done while twisting the torso – these can lead to rupture discs because of the shearing forces exhausted into the spine.

The truth is you can still get your regular dose of work out while at the office or looking after the kids. But it’s probably not like anything you have seen or tried before. In fact, if you do it in the office where people can see you, you might get some funny looks from your co-workers.

Does it sound impossible – getting work out right in the office or at home, with limited time and with no exercise equipment? Perhaps you might even think it’s not that effective at all. But researches have shown that doing this form of work out is just as effective as doing it in the gym using all those machines!

So here’s how it’s done:

To tone the muscles, you need to have resistance. But as said earlier, you can get an effective work out even without barbells or any other gym equipment. How? By using your own body weight. Of course with this kind of work out, you can not expect the same effects all those gym equipment do on your muscles – bulking them up. Again, this is for toning the muscles, giving you that firm and lean look.

Normally, you need to do cardio exercises for 30-60 minutes 5 times a week, or pump iron at the gym for a number of reps and sets. With this work out regimen, you only need to devote 2-3 minutes per session, at around 6-8 times each day. If you got your own private office, you need not worry about onlookers thinking you’re going nuts. But if you don’t, try not to be too self-conscious about it. Some people who did this work out in view of everyone even got their office mates to joint them!

Again, you don’t need to purchase any equipment for this. All you need to have is a small space to perform short bursts of work out routines. Another great thing about this approach is you can adjust it, depending on your available free time. Just try to do as much of it whenever possible, completing the 6-8 times per day frequency.

Now what exercises are to be done?

Actually, there are many exercises you can incorporate into this regimen. But it’s best to focus on some, as they target large muscle groups, enabling you to do more in less time. For your upper body, you can do some push ups, which will tone your arms and chest area. Then you can supplement it with abdominal exercises – crunches, leg lifts and plank. For the lower body, try to focus on doing lunges and squats. Also, you can walk up and down the stairs to target multiple muscle groups in your lower body all at the same time.

Doing these exercises does not require you to carry weights as your own body weight would suffice to provide resistance. However, if you really want to challenge your body, you can employ things you can normally find in the office or at home during your work out. For instance, you can carry plastic bottles filled with water while doing lunges or walking up and down the stairs.

Now you can no longer blame your job or looking after the kids for all those excess pounds you carry around. No matter where you are and no matter how little free time you got, you can squeeze in some quick and easy work out regimen for fitness.

No matter how often you hit the gym or how long you stay there each time, without a workout plan, it’s not unlikely that you will only end up frustrated. The amount of time you spend at the gym will yield no satisfactory results. A workout routine without an effective workout plan will give you limited benefits.

Either you consult a fitness trainer or you prefer doing it on your own, creating a workout plan basically involves a common procedure. The following is an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide in coming up with an effective workout plan.

Step #1: Outlining Your Objective

Do you intend to lose weight? Or gain weight, perhaps? Do you want to have a lean figure? Or do you want to have huge muscles? Deciding on what your objective is gives your workout routine a cohesive approach to deliver what you are intending to have in the end.

You can have one or more objectives. This is basically a statement which tells you what your workout plan is focused on. Some examples are:

• To improve my strength and endurance
• To increase my weight and muscle mass

Step #2: Coming Up with Goals

Goals, by and large, are more specific than objectives. It may be based on your objectives, but precise detailing is added into the picture. There are two types of goals: short-term and long-term goals. Let us begin with short-term goals.

Usually, a short-term goal is based on a span of a week or month. This is a specific intention which you want to have achieved by the end of the time given for it. For example:

• To lose 1 lb at the end of the week
• To gain 4 lbs of muscle mass at the end of the month

On the other hand, you need to provide longer time periods for your long-term goals. You may also have your long-term goals based on your short-term goals, provided that you will be able to meet each short–term goal. Examples of long-term goals are:

• To bench press 300 lbs at the end of the year
• To lose 20 lbs of excess weight by next year

Step #3: Picking Routines

Depending on each body part you want to work out, you might want to consult a fitness trainer or do some researching on which routines are best. And don’t forget how each one is performed the right way, to avoid injuries and to achieve results.

Workout routines are usually scattered throughout the week, with each session focusing on a few body parts. As a general rule, one should allow muscles to rest for 24-42 hours in between work out. This means, for example, you did bicep curls yesterday, you should not repeat it today to let your biceps recover.

Your muscles, in time, will get used to a particular set of routines. You don’t want this to happen as you muscles will no longer benefit from it. To solve this, you might want to change your routines occasionally. You may increase the reps per set. You may do fewer reps per set but with heavier weights. Or you may altogether incorporate newer routines to challenge your muscles.

Step #4: Creating a Schedule

When doing your schedule, you should consider your lifestyle or career, as your working out is likely to be inserted during before or after office hours, or during weekends or holidays. You need not hit the gym daily; 3 times a week is good enough. And you need to maximize your session each time, so you might want to target 2-3 muscle groups each time. A sample schedule would be:

• Monday – Arms, legs and abs
• Tuesday – Rest
• Wednesday – Chest, back and abs
• Thursday – Rest
• Friday – Arms, legs and abs
• Saturday – Chest and back
• Sunday – Rest

It doesn’t necessarily mean you should do nothing on rest days. You can perform some light exercises, such as walking, biking, yoga and the likes – but no weight lifting. Again, you need to have your muscles rested to recover. Also, you might want to change your schedule every month to challenge your body, and increase your strength and endurance.