Burn More Fat with Consistent Exercise and Strength Training

Fat Burning Tip #1: Exercise Consistently

It may seem like a no-brainer that regular exercise can help you burn fat and lose weight. But, it's not just about the calories you're burning. It's also about the adaptations your body makes when you exercise on a regular basis. Many of those adaptations lead directly to your ability to burn more fat without even trying. When you exercise regularly, your body:

• Becomes more efficient at delivering and extracting oxygen -- Simply put, this helps your cells burn fat more efficiently.
• Has better circulation -- This allows the fatty acids to move more efficiently through the blood and into the muscle. That means fat is more readily available for fueling the body.
• Increases the number and size of mitochondria, also known as cellular power plants that provide energy for the body.

And, don't forget, regular exercise will also help you manage your weight. The more activity you engage in, the more calories you'll burn, and the easier it is to create the calorie deficit needed to lose weight.

Tips for Consistent Exercise

• Schedule some exercise time every day, even if it's just a few minutes.
• Split up your workouts. You can get the same benefit from short workouts spread throughout the day as do with continuous workouts.
• Change daily routines to incorporate activity. Park at the edge of the parking lot at work to add more walking time, or add an extra lap at the mall when shopping. Integrating more activity into your usual routines will help you stay active, even if you don't have time for a structured workout.
• Make exercise your focus and schedule the rest of your day around it instead of trying to squeeze it in when you can. If it's not a priority, you won't do it.

Fat Burning Tip #2: Lift Weights

Adding more muscle by lifting weights can also help with burning fat, especially if you're also dieting. Lifting weights:

• Preserves muscle mass -- If you diet to lose weight, you actually risk losing muscle as well as fat. Muscle is metabolically active, so when you lose it, you also lose the extra calorie-burn muscles can provide.
• Keeps your metabolism going -- Some studies have found that a diet-only approach to weight loss could lower a person's resting metabolic rate by up to 20% a day. Lifting weights and maintaining muscle helps keep the metabolism up, even if you're cutting your calories.
• Helps you burn extra calories -- If you lift weights at a higher intensity, you can actually increase your afterburn, or the calories you burn after your workout. As About.com Weight Training Guide Paul Rogers states in his article, Burn More Fat, "If you can get afterburn...that’s a bonus because you burn fat during the exercise and after you cease as
  well."

There's no way around the fact that, when it comes to burning more fat, we have to work at it. There is no magic exercise, workout or pill that will do the job for us. But, the good news is that it doesn't take much activity to push the body into that fat burning mode. Try incorporating some type of activity every day, even if it's just a quick walk, and build on that over time as it becomes more of a routine. Do that and you're on the way to burning more fat.