Sunday, January 4, 2009

Shed Those Stubborn Pounds with Fat Burning Workouts

By Gina Gardi

Losing weight initially with any exercise program and healthy eating habits at first seems easy. Seeing results right away is great motivation. But if your fat loss starts to slow down and you don't see the visible effects it's hard to continue.

The initial efforts will help you lose weight quickly but then it becomes harder. You hit a plateau and nothing seems to be working. Don't lose faith. You may just need to train differently by adding variety and challenging yourself. There are ways to reach 100% of your fat burning goals and most importantly help keep you there with smart training and a good diet.

Sometimes the difficulty in shedding those last few pounds may be because of lack of persistence. You may say that you're happy with what you've accomplished so far and tend to slack off and go back to your old habits. You start to give up before you reach your final goal.

Don't give up before your reach your goal because this can have negative long term effects. It will be even more difficult the next time you try to sick to your goals. Persistence to stick to your goal will help you develop good habits of following through and will give you a positive morale boost.

Most of the time the problem isn't that you don't work hard enough but that you may just be training wrong. Cardio alone is a great way to burn extra calories but not the best way. Strength training with long rests between exercises can be inefficient use of your time and less effective in burning fat.

One of the most common mistakes is performing the same routine for more than 6 weeks. Burning fat requires a combination of both resistance and cardio but also adding variety and increasing intensity.

Don't make the mistake of following the same exercise routine for more than 6 weeks. This will lead to a plateau because your muscles will adapt after this point and will require less energy which burns less calories. Your muscles have become efficient at performing the same exercises at this point. Its important to add variety and vary your intensity.

If you walk everyday at the same pace and for the same amount of time you'll notice that after a while you lose less weight. Add intervals by challenging yourself to walk faster for a few minutes or walking up hills or increase the total time you walk.

Don't perform the same exercises with the same intensity for more than 4 to 6 weeks. Make sure to add some variety by trying different exercises and adding intensity as they exercises become easier. This way you'll keep your body challenged and continue to burn fat and keep it off. - 17944

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