Does Exercise Help You Lose Fat?

Many people come to Thrive Fitness in Reno, NV, to lose fat and build muscle tissue. The right type of exercise can help you do that. It helps you live healthier, boosts your energy, and makes it easier to lose weight. All exercise burns more calories, but not all exercises specifically burn fat. For instance, cardiovascular exercises like running burn calories. It breaks down both lean muscle tissue and fat tissue to get those calories. That can make weight loss even harder. Fat-burning exercises build muscle tissue as they burn fat.

What exercises burn more fat than others?

Strength training builds muscle tissue as it burns fat tissue. You can use bodyweight exercises, weightlifting, kettlebells, or resistance bands. To increase the calories you burn, make the workout a HIIT workout. HIIT stands for high intensity interval training. It’s not a specific exercise, but a way to do any exercise, including strength training. You alternate between peak intensity and a recovery pace. HIIT workouts burn a high amount of calories in a short period and continue boosting your metabolism for hours after you quit working out.

Circuit training workouts are also great fat burners.

No matter what your workout goal is, you still need to do all types of workouts, including flexibility, strength, endurance, and balance. Doing circuit training includes all of those things and does even more. During circuit training, you move from one exercise station to another. Stations are nothing more than a location ready for a specific type of exercise, such as having barbells ready to lift or a treadmill. It’s all about moving from one set of exercises to another with little time between the two. It works a variety of muscle groups and can address all types of exercise.

Make the workout intense and burn off the hormones of stress.

When you’re under stress, the brain sends messages to create hormones that prepare the body for fighting or running. If you’re in a life-threatening situation where that’s necessary, it’s a good thing. Most people don’t experience that. Instead, they find themselves under stress in traffic jams, at work, or in some other everyday occurrence that isn’t solved by either. The hormones of stress still signal the body and unless you run, fight, or exercise to work them off, they affect your body. Cortisol is one of those hormones. It’s associated with belly fat. When you do intense training, it burns off the hormones of stress that add fat around your belly, while also burning calories.

• HIIT workouts cut your workout time. You’ll benefit more or as much from a short HIIT workout as you would from a full-length steady-state, traditional session. If you’re short on time, HIIT is perfect.
• Not only does exercise help burn off the hormones of stress, but it also helps realign hormones that are out of balance. Strenuous exercise is recommended for rebalancing hormones at menopause.
• No matter how much you workout, you won’t burn fat if you’re not adjusting to your diet. A healthy diet that’s high in protein can help you burn fat as you build muscle tissue.
• Getting adequate sleep also makes fat loss easier. When you lack sleep, your body produces more ghrelin—the hunger hormone—and less leptin—the hormone that makes you feel full. That makes it harder to keep your diet in check.

For more information, contact us today at Thrive Fitness!