If you are like many other people you are searching for the best fat burning exercises.  But like many people you have heard many different answers to the question of which exercise is best to burn fat.  Some experts will tell you the low to moderate aerobic exercises are best for burning fat while still others will say it is the high intense workouts.  Then there are those that claim strength training exercises are best for burning fat.

With so many different experts and answers it can be confusing to determine what the best fat burning exercises are.  The fact is all of these answers are correct to some extent.  To burn body fat you will need to do both aerobic exercises as well as strength training.  Aerobics will give you the high calorie and fat burn while strength training builds lean muscle mass which increases your basal metabolic rate.  The higher your BMR the more calories you burn each day.

So if you need both aerobic exercises and strength training exercises the question now becomes two separate questions; 1) What are the best fat burning aerobic exercises and 2) What are the best fat burning strength training exercises.

Best Strength Training Fat Burning Exercises

Performing strength training exercises will not burn excessive amounts of fat while doing the exercise.  Where you get the fat burning benefit is by toning and strengthening your muscles.  Muscles are more metabolically demanding, meaning the more lean muscle mass you have the higher your metabolism.  This in turn means you will burn more calories while doing normal everyday activities.

Most experts agree that the best and most effective way to really build lean muscle is by doing weight lifting exercises.  However, weight lifting is not the only option for strength training.  If you are new to strength training, you can start by doing resistance band exercises or dumbbell exercises.

Both of these options are a fairly inexpensive and convenient way to strength train.  Using either resistance bands or dumbbells will provide the added resistance you need to effectively tone and strengthen muscles.  You can perform many of the same exercises as you would with a home gym or weight lifting equipment.

Even though weight lifting seems to be the most effective, doing any strength training will help you build muscle, increase your metabolism and help burn fat.

Best Aerobic Fat Burning Exercises

While the answer to the strength training exercises for burning fat is fairly straight forward and generally agreed upon by the experts, the answer to the best aerobic exercises for burning fat is not as simple.

Many experts, articles and websites will tell you the low to moderate intense aerobic exercises are best for burning fat.  The logic behind this belief is easy to understand since you approximately 60% of the total calories burned are from fat.  Even though the low to moderate aerobic exercises use a higher percent of fat for fuel they also burn fewer calories overall than the high intense workouts.

A high intense aerobic exercise routine will burn approximately 35% of fat for fuel.  The reason that your body uses less fat for fuel in a high intense aerobic workout is that the body switches to using primarily carbohydrates for fuel as it is more readily available.

So if the lower intense workouts burn more fat why do some experts claim the higher intense workouts are best for burning fat.  To best demonstrate this belief I will use an example.  Let’s take a 35 year old woman weighing 150 pounds.  If she walked briskly at 3 mph, a moderate level aerobic exercise, for 30 minutes she would have burned about 135 calories.  If 60% of this was from fat she would have burned 81 fat calories.

Now if this same woman ran at 6 mph for the same 30 minutes, which is a high intense aerobic exercise, she would have burned a total of 360 calories.  If the fat burn was only 35% this still equates to 126 fat calories.  As you can see she was able to burn more calories and more fat calories with the high intense aerobic exercise.

Unfortunately many of us cannot keep up this high pace for this amount of time.  So let’s say she limited her run to only 20 minutes at the 6 mph.  She would have burned 240 calories and 84 fat calories.  But even 20 minutes at this level can be difficult for many people, especially if you are just beginning an exercise routine.

So as you can see from the examples all the aerobic exercises are effective in burning calories and fat.  Selecting the intensity level that is right for you is where you want to focus.  If you are just starting out, start with the low to moderate aerobic exercises and if you have been exercising for awhile then try kicking it up a notch to really get the most out of your fat burning exercises.

Julie Barros is the author and creator of Exercise 4 Weight Loss.  On her website you can find lots of valuable information and tips on exercise and weight loss plus weight loss tools, free fitness videos, healthy recipes and much more.

*Posted 9/16/08