Here’s a model exercise program you can use to spend less time in the gym due to the extended calorie burn you see after each workout. For this example program you will be working out three days a week for approximately one hour each time. Assuming you don’t want to work out on the weekends let’s say the workout days are Monday, Wednesday, Friday. On these days you will be doing strength training for 45 minutes followed by 15 minutes of high intensity cardio.

For strength training you will want to primarily focus on full body exercises that incorporate multiple muscle groups and multiple joints. These types of exercises are better known as “compound” exercises. Some examples of compound exercises you can do are: bench press, squats, deadlifts, lunges, rows, and push-ups. There are many more but that is a good list for starters. Pick four of those and that is your strength routine. This type of program allows your body rest in between each workout while still burning calories on those days of rest.

Your cardio is going to be short and sweet. By sweet I mean, high intensity. High Intensity is the most effective and efficient way to improve cardiovascular function and increase the body’s metabolism boosting fat loss. What would you consider hard: sprinting, running, light jog? Your answer is going to be your high intensity exercise that you will be doing for one minute in combination with one minute of rest repeated for the 15 minute duration of your cardio time.

Combining both strength training and high intensity cardio is a proven way to efficiently burn more fat for up to 72 hours after a workout. If you cannot dedicate 3 days a week to exercise than you are not ready to see results!

Before we start going over what you can actually do to start harnessing these fat loss hormones you need to understand the foundation of weight loss and how it works within our bodies.  It all starts with our metabolism, the rate at which our metabolism is able to metabolize calories determines how many calories we need to maintain our current weight, or how much you need to exercise to increase the number of calories your metabolism is capable of burning in a period of time. If that was too confusing let’s break this down to “calories in vs. calories out.” If the number of calories you burn (out) is greater than the number you consume (in) then you will experience weight loss.

Now that you know a little bit about the metabolism and  “calories in vs. calories out,” let’s go over how you can manipulate this to activate more of the body’s natural fat burning hormones. To do this we are breaking it up into the two groups mentioned above, and that would be “calories in” or how much we consume, and “calories out” or how many calories we burn daily.

“Calories in” is just as, or more important than “calories out,” so do not take this section lightly as most do and tend not to see results. “Calories in” being the foods you consume throughout the day needs to be put at the top of the priority list to guarantee that you see results.  To make things as simple as possible, if you follow this one rule –  every meal must consist of a lean protein, a complex carbohydrate, and one serving of fruit and vegetables, and doing so, you are guaranteed to see results as long as you are not over indulging. Try six meals a day, but cut the carbs out of the last two meals.

“Calories out,” requires exercise and/or going to the gym and working out. Let’s talk about how you can cut your time at the gym and see better results. Do you think you would see better results if you did sprints for ten minutes or walked for an hour? Most people would say walk for an hour, but the answer is actually the sprints for ten minutes. The sudden metabolic spike leads to an immediate release in fat metabolizing hormones to convert fat into fuel. Intensive, frequent, short workouts and/or interval training, will boost your metabolism and burn more calories.

Learning how to control your calories and metabolism will get those fat burning hormones into action. Getting a personal trainer and discussing your diet with a health professional, can get you off on the right foot and on a healthy, fat burning, weight loss regimen.

When we exercise, our bodies will start burning calories, but the calories that are burned are the calories from carbohydrates in our system. In order to burn calories from your stored fat, your body requires the presence of oxygen. There is a certain amount of oxygen that your body needs in order to start burning fat and the only way for you to measure the amount needed for your own body is to keep up with your target heart rate during exercise.

Please understand that if you continue to only burn calories from carbohydrates, you will lose mostly “water weight” which leads to a decrease in your metabolism. Also, think of the calories that are burned from carbohydrates as your energy calories. If you lose too much energy calories then your muscles will not receive enough energy to increase your metabolism which indirectly burn fat. Therefore you must increase your calorie intake when you are on an exercise program to replace your burned energy calories.

Burning Fat Calories during exercise

During aerobic exercise, your body goes through several stages before it reaches the point where you are burning fat. You will hear people say that you are only burning sugar (carbohydrates) not fat during the first 10 minutes of exercise. This is true to a certain extent. I say this because you will continue to burn sugar past the 10 minute mark if you are not working out hard enough for your body to want more oxygen; or you are working out too hard and you can’t supply your body with enough oxygen for fat burning. When you exercise you must move at a steady pace (not too fast, not too slow) so your body will utilize your stored fat (not carbohydrates or sugar) as its energy source. Also remember 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. Make sure that you are within your target heart rate range.

Burning Fat Calories at rest

The only way for you to continue to burn fat calories hours after you have finished working out is through the anaerobic exercise of weight training. Weight training is the key to burning fat at rest. Weight training is an anaerobic activity that will cause you to burn more calories than aerobic exercise. The calories that you are burning during weight training exercises are mostly calories from carbohydrates (meaning you must eat even more calories per day for energy); but the calories you burn at rest are mostly calories from fat. The reason you are burning fat at rest is because weight training increases your metabolism which uses your stored fat as energy.

To make your body the ultimate fat burning machine you must do aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (weight training) exercises.