5 Ways to Burn Your Fat

Burn Your Fat

Put Down the Heavy Weights

You don’t have to grunt and groan with heavy dumbbells to see results. A recent study from McMaster University found that lifting light weights (about 30% of maximum effort, or about 24 times until fatigue) was just as effective at building

Muscles as heaving heavier ones (up to 90% maximum load, or about 5 to 10 reps before fatigue), as long as the target muscle group was fully fatigued by the final rep.

Go Hard or Go Home

The more active you are, the more likely you are to push yourself during a workout. Researchers from New Zealand found that women who exercised regularly were more likely on their own to work at a heart rate near or above VT1 than their more sedentary counterparts.

Keep Your Feet on the Ground

When it comes to the amount of fat you’ll burn during a workout, you’ll torch more of it by going for a run than by hopping on a bike, according to a British study from the University of Birmingham.

Make Like a Hare

Slow and steady doesn’t always win the race for weight loss. New research shows that women who lost at least 1 1/2 pounds a week were more successful at achieving long-term significant weight loss than those who lost 1/2 pound or less a week. The fast-weight losers were 5 times more likely to have lost at least 10% of their body weight at 18 months than those who took off the pounds more gradually.

Keep at It for a Healthy Belly

Exercise is key to keeping off dangerous belly fat. Subjects in a study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham who had lost an average of 24 pounds and then kept up their fitness routines of either strength training or cardio for 40 minutes twice a week for 1 year, regained no visceral fat, even if they put on a little weight. Those who had stopped exercising weren’t so lucky: They averaged about a 33% increase in visceral fat.