How To: The Basics of Burning Fat and Getting into Shape

We all want the perfect body and want to be in perfect health, or just better than average. If you want to lose weight, get into shape, and live a healthier life, then this is the guide for you. All of the steps below will help you to get on your feet and in a basic plan for getting into shape.

Let’s begin with eating habits. You do not need to diet, dieting results in two things. It can starve it of nutrients that your body needs and if you diet and eat less, your body won't think it is being fed again for a long time, so it says, "I'm going to take this and turn it into fat and store it right here since he/she isn't going to feed me again until tonight." Then when you eat again that night, it keeps that fat there instead of using/burning it.

This is why I believe that many people recommend eating 4 to 6 times a day, with maybe one or two small meals or snacks to hold you over in between. Consume plenty of water an hour or so before your exercises, and try not to eat a lot before them; after your exercises get a protein intake source, either through a meat or a liquid. Just try not to eat about 2 to 3 hours before you go to bed, but IF you do eat late, then do not eat carbs. They will turn to fat overnight.

Carbohydrates are what the body uses for energy, it burns these, as well as fat, to fuel your body. At night time, when you're watching TV, you do not need carbs, so snack on something with fiber, like a fruit or a vegetable or something low in carbs and fat.

What you do need to do, is monitor what you do eat, the amount of carbs, to fat, to protein ratios that it has, amount of sugar and preservatives, etc. Make smart choices. If you have the money, buy in bulk, buy raw foods and cook them all with your own spices and methods. Avoid the preservatives and ‘make from a can’ foods.You can cut most of the bad things out, by cooking yourself and creating your own at home meals.

When weighing yourself, do not do it too often. Results will not show up quick enough for any of us, as we all want the impossible. Weigh in weekly, keep track of what you lose, what you gain, and what you've done differently that week or month.

To burn fat, you have to burn more calories than your body consumes, so that after you burn your carbohydrates store of energy, you move onto your fat stores for energy. So if you eat 2200 calories in a day, your body needs to burn 2300 calories to be in the fat burning area.

This is all simple in thought. You just need to raise your heart rate, simple right? Not necessarily. Your ideal “fat burning” zone is your cardio zone, although you can get by with lower, this is the best. To hit the fat burning zone, you need to train at 60 to 70 percent of your maximal heart rate. Your cardio zone is between 70 and 85 percent of your maximal heart rate. While you burn a higher percentage of calories from fat when you work in the fat burning zone, you are still better off working in the cardio zone if you want to lose weigh.

Understand though, when burning fat to lose weight, you can’t burn fat too fast, or you will also burn muscle, when your body has no more fat to burn, it turns to your muscle and glycogen stores, which is bad, because this will counteract your whole purpose. The ideal rate is about one or two pounds a week, for the average person. Some can and will burn more, or less.

Now, aside from your eating habits, heart rate, and how active you are, there are other things to consider. Doing just cardio isn’t always the best way to lose weight. You can get into shape, get a cut form, as well as lose weight faster, by adding weight lifting to your routine. An example would be to do a few minute warm up session, lift weights for a few minutes and/or do compound exercises, and then go for a run/jog.

Lifting the weights will activate your muscles quicker, and get them as well as your heart rate, into an anabolic zone to burn fat faster to feed these muscles. It doesn’t have to be anything extreme, just some basic lifting. The reason weight training is good is because one pound of muscle, burns 50 calories in everyday use. Cardio only burns calories when you are doing it, and while your heart rate states elevated in the 'zone' we discussed above.

Now ladies, just because you lift weights doesn't mean you will get overly muscular like males. Your body doesn't have the necessary hormones and genes to process that much muscle mass without taking testosterone or steroids, so no worries.

If you cannot get all your daily nutrients from what you eat everyday, consider doing two things. Drinking more water, and taking a multi-vitamin. The water will help make you fuller quicker and the multi-vitamin is there to feed your body the nutrients it needs that it didn't get from the food.

The last thing I will cover here is do not over train or over work yourself. Train for 3 days a week, with a day of rest in between. Make sure to get plenty of protein (found in lean meats, fish, milk, beans, and eggs) because your muscles are made up primarily of protein and use it to rebuild.