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People often ask me what is the best way to lose fat. Besides the obvious of stop eating rubbish the other suggestion is to take up some cardiovascular exercise (cardio).
What is the best cardio to burn fat is often the next question....
Cardio does not work on a one off effort. You cannot start doing cardio for 1 or 2 weeks and expect it to have a profound effect on your body composition. You will not lose weight to any great degree. You need to do cardio as an ongoing commitment.
Best Cardio Choices
The best cardio is one that you enjoy and will do continually. If you do not keep at your cardio with consistancy then it is not going to help, especially if you quit through boredom after the first 3 weeks.
What sport do you like? Forget keeping the pulse rate at 80% of VO2 max and all that rubbish. It has been shown that burst interval training will burn as much, or possibly more fat than constant 80% VO2 max (training so you can just talk as you exercise without strain). What this means is that the theoretical experts cannot agree what is the best cardio, so don't listen to them.
Do you like sprints? Do you like long (fast) walks? Swimming? Playing touch football? Tennis?
What do you like? That is the best cardio for you.
Best Cardio For Fat Loss
What use is it if I tell you getting up at 6am and drinking 3 black coffees, and aspirin and doing a slow jog / fast walk for 60-90 minutes every morning before breakfast is the best cardio to burn fat - how many times will you do this before you give up. BTW this is the best cardio for fat burning if you are on a deadline and can stick with it for the required time - switching to something you enjoy as an ongoing activity after you reach your goal.
ANY strenuous exercise that lasts 45 - 60 minutes will do the job, preferrably longer.
If you can do 2 hours of cardio a day then break your cardio training into 2 segments one first thing in the morning one later in the afternoon, the reason is that cardio keeps your metabolism elevated and thus burning fat for a while after you stop so doing it twice a day can help more.
So the best cardio is to do what you enjoy most, this is the thing that will burn fat the most for you over a year.
As I said, ANY exercise will do, a good long session in bed (several hours is good) with your favourite partner will even do (actually this is a personal favourite as besides the heart rate I would not really call it exercise, and it is something I will never get bored of), not to mention a host of benefits for your hormonal and endocrine system.
Just get out and do it, well maybe not that, but do some cardio exercise regularly and you will get results. Just stick with it for 3 months to start with then set another goal and adjust the exercise after those 3 months are up .
The best cardio is the exercise that you will continue to day day in day out.
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