Aerobic exercise alone for fat loss is a very inefficient strategy, on par with using a shot glass to drain the ocean. Never squander your precious gym time on this over-hyped and ineffective form of exercise if you have less than six hours per week* to devote to working out.
Aerobic training should not be used for fat loss by anyone other than competitive bodybuilders. Compared to more rigorous, efficient, and beneficial exercises like weight training, it is a total and utter waste of time and energy for everyone else.
To Not Buy Into The Hype
Aerobic exercise increases caloric expenditure, and an energy deficit is necessary for fat loss. Aerobic exercise is NOT an effective means of losing weight. To burn extra calories, it is the least effective form of exercise possible.
Even waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) causes you to burn more calories than you would if you were to stay in bed all day. Furthermore, the proportion of calories burned from fat when waiting in line is higher than the percentage of calories burned while jogging in your “fat-burning zone” (FBZ), but that’s for later.
Compared to sitting on the couch, 30 minutes of FBZ exercises will increase your calorie burn rate by a significant amount. Conversely, if you kick butt for 30 minutes in the gym, you’d:
*A) Use up a lot more energy throughout the workout itself.
*B) Get a metabolic boost from your high-intensity workout that lasts for more than 12 hours (unlike what you’d get from aerobic exercise) thanks to oxygen debt (EPOC).
*C) Boost your metabolism again as your body works to heal the muscular tissue that was damaged during your weight training session AND
*D) Either permanently increase or keep your current metabolic rate stable. Gaining muscle causes you to use more calories constantly, day and night. Gaining muscle makes you burn more calories while doing the same work. In addition, only muscle can effectively convert food into fuel.
Muscle has a higher density than fat does for women. If you lose 5 pounds of fat and add 5 pounds of muscle, your total weight will remain the same, but you will look smaller, feel firmer, and burn calories faster. It’s not in the gonads, as the saying goes, to get “big” without medicines.
If you undertake enough aerobic training to see significant weight loss, you may lose muscle, which means your basal metabolic rate will decrease around the clock every day of the year. I’ll start: “Aerobics suck!”
The “fat-burning zone” is just a bunch of fat-burning hooey. During low-intensity activity, you burn a more significant proportion of calories overall, but they don’t tell you this percentage applies to a considerably smaller amount.
So, you end up losing muscle mass, it’s boring, you have to do it forever to see results, and there are no after-effects in the form of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), energy expended repairing damaged muscles, or metabolic boost from keeping or gaining lean body mass (you’ll probably lose muscle mass).
And finally, you should know that aerobic exercise is NOT essential for cardiovascular fitness. In much less time, with better muscle tone/size, and less boredom, you can receive the same (or even better) results by engaging in circuit or interval training (below).
Get Rid of Body Fat Quicker
What’s the fix? Interval work! Interval training works out the body’s energy systems by alternating between high and low-intensity periods.
Exerting oneself with more intensity to burn more calories is an example of energy labor. Also included here would be steady-state aerobics, which isn’t optimal for trimming down. When combined with proper nutrition and a well-structured resistance training routine (90-120 minutes per week should do the trick), weight loss of 1-2 pounds per week is entirely doable. Plus, your interval training sessions, including warm-up and cool-down, will never exceed 20 minutes.
Weeks 1-4: 4 Intervals (60 seconds “up” and 120 seconds “down”), four times a week (17 minutes total).
For Weeks 4-5, do 5 Intervals (60/120) four times a week for 20 minutes.
From Weeks 9-12, you’ll be doing five 20-minute interval sessions five times per week (at a 60/120 ratio).
Thirteenth to sixteenth weeks: six intervals (sixty seconds “up” and ninety seconds “down”), five days a week (20 minutes total).
To illustrate (weeks 1-4),
Releasing tension for three minutes.
Time Segment 1 One minute at maximum speed (a 9 or 10) followed by two minutes of rest (a six on the same scale)
In the second interval, you’ll go for one minute at maximum speed and intensity (a 9 or 10 on a scale from 1 to 10), followed by two minutes of rest (about a 6).
Third interval: go for 1 minute at maximum speed/effort (a 9 or 10) and then rest for 2 minutes (a six on the scale).
Time Mark Four One minute at maximum speed (a 9 or 10) followed by two minutes of rest (a six on the same scale)
Reduce heat for 2 minutes.
All it took was 17 minutes (more time than that because of the increased energy expenditure during and after the workout, which I’m stealing from Alwyn Cosgrove’s coinage of the term “afterburn”).
On the “up,” you ought to be blowing some serious steam. This is not the cardio you can do while flipping through a magazine. It would be best to exert as much effort as possible to speed up the fat-burning process. It’s possible to read quietly while warming up or cooling down, but when you’re “up,” you need your full attention on maintaining your kick-butt interval. Currently TV-free. Not having a conversation (you shouldn’t be able to talk during the “up” due to how hard you’re breathing). Keep your mind straight, put forth the effort, and use your brain.
Washington, DC-based fat-loss (as opposed to weight-loss) expert Josef Brandenburg is known for his dedication to assisting regular, time-pressed people in achieving their fitness goals in a manner that fits into their hectic schedules. In just four weeks, with only 3–3.5 hours of exercise per week, his typical client loses 8–0 pounds of body fat. To learn more, please visit.
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