what is the best exercise for fat burning? and do any foods promote fat burning?

Answer 1

First, for all of the "quick and easy" weight loss diet pill suggestions, remember, if something sounds too good to be true... it probably is, particularly if you have to pay for it.


On Yahoo!Answers I find certain questions being asked repeatedly which is simply a reflection of new people participating. A couple of common questions amount to "How do I lose weight," or more specifically, "How do I lose abdominal fat?" I have gotten very positive responses from my answers when I paused to reply (and now beginning to get "It works!" emails that are very gratifying. I like helping people)... so have recently decided to put a good solid answer on my Yahoo!360 Blog (September 10) that I can point people to. These are my thoughts as a physician and athlete.

Don't target losing more than about 2 lbs per week. If you try to lose faster, your body will go into "starvation mode" and get very stingy about burning calories while at the same time very efficient about storing any calories that you do provide. And it will make you feel awful.

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. If you do a Google search on say, "swimming calories" you will quickly find a website with tables of calories burned for a given exercise. You can use such lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you work them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.


Aloha

Answer 2

No foods promote fat burning nor do any foods significantly affect your rate of metabolism.
The only thing that significantly increases your metabolism is exercise.
However, exercise is not a quick way to lose weight. Consider that it takes a five mile walk (or equivalent) to use up the energy value of an average (300g) chocolate bar.
There is no 'best' exercise - it is just down to the total amount of energy you have used. Running a mile in under 4 minutes uses up the same energy as a gentle stroll for one mile. The work done (energy used) depends on the weight moved and the distance it is moved.
To lose weight - eat less.
For reliable medical/scientific advice about diet and nutrition look here:

Answer 3

Muscle burns fat. Doing core exercise 3-4 days a week (with a day in between) will help build and strength your core muscles. Eating fruits, vegetables, together with proteins and whole grain carbohydrates (not empty carbohydrates like sugar or white breads)will help with the dietary end of burning fat. Also daily aerobic exercise is good in correlation with the core workouts. Resistance exercise is very good.

Answer 4

Cranberry Juice and Water. Drink 16oz a day 1/4 cranberry juice and 3/4 water. And like everyone else said "cardio, cardio, cardio". Mix your sesion up so your body doesn't get use to them; if your using videos alternate every two weeks or if you run mix it up with walking. Doctors use to recommend 30 min three days per week, but now they say 40-50 min 5x per week. You can split it into two session if that is more convient for your schedule. This cocktail will help you flush the fat and if you have any cellulite it will reduce it's apperence in about four weeks.

Good Luck!

Answer 5

The best exercise is one that you will do on a regular basis. That said, walking, jogging, running and weight training will burn fat. You just need to select the one that you can do for a sustained period of time. It all boils down to burning more calories than are consumed.

Answer 6

Aerobics or anything that's cardio vascular! - the best way to exercise and lose weight is not to overdo things! 10 minutes zooming about is less effective than 20 minutes steady exercise!

Eating a sensible Gi low fat diet is good for your health!

Answer 7

I believe celery is calory negative (burns more calories digesting it than you get from it). Possibly the same for Tomatoes (but not sure)

Imalso think drinking cold water is good.

1. It has to be heated up to body temperature (uses calories)
2. You then lose the 'hot' water during exhalation, sweat and urine.

Answer 8

muscle burns at least four times as many calories as fat does so try twenty minutes of strength straining two to three times a week

Answer 9

Walk daily 30 mins in the morning

Answer 10

At a restaurant split your meal and eat only half meal and take the rest home if the quality is more

Answer 11

Proteins takes more time to digest than carbs so eating protein will make you feel full for longer