Can Cardio Burn Belly Fat?
If you run miles a day and do tons of cardio workouts to burn belly fat, but find you're not getting the results you want, there's a reason. Steady state cardio isn't necessarily the best route to take. Belly fat---visceral fat---is the hardest type of fat to lose. There's no special exercise to take it off your belly either, since spot exercises simply don't work that way. To lose belly fat, you have to lose fat all over your body. While cardio does burn calories, there are downsides to cardio that can sabotage your efforts.
Cardio burns lots of calories, but they come from both fat and muscle.
When you do a cardio workout, the calories come from burning both fat and muscle. Why is that important? Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain, so the more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you burn. If you choose strictly cardio, it can burn that muscle tissue for energy, leaving you with a slower metabolism. That makes it even harder to lose any fat, let alone belly fat.
You still need cardio, but need to make some modifications.
Whether you're trying to lose belly fat or just get fit, you need cardio workouts. You can modify your cardio or endurance training to maximize the benefits. Turn your cardio into a HIIT---high intensity interval training---workout. All you have to do is modify how you do the cardio. If you're running, run at top intensity for a minute or two and then switch your pace to a recovery pace for the same length of time or longer. Switch back and forth between the two levels of intensity for maximum calorie burning and benefits. Studies show HIIT workouts burn far more calories than steady state cardio.
For the fastest results, combine your HIIT workout with strength training.
Strength training builds muscle tissue and the more you have, the more muscles you build. It also burns tons of calories. If you make your strength training also a HIIT cardio workout, you'll get the best of both worlds, burning calories from fat, while you build muscle tissue. You'll notice many of our workouts are tough and have an element of cardio and strength training. This is just one reason for that type of workout.
- How do you make strength training cardio training? You do your strength training sets for various body parts with no rest between the exercises. You'll maximize the benefits of both.
- HIIT training can help cut down on workout time. It also produces after burn, which means you continue to burn calories long after your workout ended.
- Not all your workouts should be HIIT or resistance training, even if you're trying to lose belly fat. You still need cardio, like swimming, walking and stair-climbing to decrease the risk of type2 diabetes, osteoporosis, depression and some types of cancer.
- Our trainers at Habitat Health and Fitness will create a program designed specifically for your needs no matter what your goal. It will be based on the latest scientific information to help you reach your goal more quickly.
For more information, contact us today at Habitat Health & Fitness
There's a reason that food labels provide nutritional information. It's to help you understand what you're eating and the nutrients or additives that food contains. You can watch people in any grocery aisle in Lakeland, FL, and at least one or two are reading labels. A lot of the time they end up tilting their heads quizzically or trying to hold their glasses differently to read the small print. It's supposed to make eating healthier easier, but, does it? The answer is yes. Once you understand what the label is telling you, healthy eating is easier.
For years, eating breakfast has been praised as important for your health. While that might have been extremely important when most Americans made their living farming and the work was grueling physically, is it that important now? The first meal of the day does help improve cognitive performance, focus and task performance in children, so for children it's extremely important. Once the child reaches adulthood, then whether breakfast is beneficial or not is up for grabs and often a matter of personal preference.
You might not ever think about the need for good workout shoes or have them further down the list of necessities, but they are far more important than having the latest stylish workout outfit. If you don't have good foot support, you could find yourself benched because of ankle or foot injuries. Your feet go through a lot of stress during exercise. At the least, they're the grounding force and hold up your entire body. They need to be cushioned and supportive, so when you twist and turn or land back on the ground after you jump, they're protected.
Many clients start out at Habitat Health and Fitness in Lakeland, Florida, dreading their new adventure to get back into shape, but soon change their attitude toward fitness. If you've ever tried to get fit before and failed, your attitude is the first thing you need to check at the door of the gym. Why? A bad attitude not only uses too much energy that could be better directed into doing something great for yourself or others, but it also is almost a guarantee you'll find an excuse to quit your fitness goals. The good news is that you can change how you think about fitness.
Many of my clients at Habitat Health and Fitness in Lakeland, FL, ask me about a variety of different fitness techniques and options. One that I find particularly good and have said so before is planning your meals and cooking them for a week at a time. It not only helps people stick with a healthy plan of eating, it makes it easier, saves time and money. People ask how to start meal planning and exactly what it is. Typically, it's planning a week's worth of meals during the week, often on Wednesday because grocery sales are announced, then create a grocery list. Shopping is done after you eat on Thursday or Friday and meals are cooked for the next week over the weekend.
What is BMI, and is it a good measure of your health? BMI---body mass index---uses your height to weight ration to determine the amount of body fat you have. The more body fat, the more potential there is for poor health. However, it's not always a true picture or the final verdict. For instance, people with a great deal of muscle mass might appear on paper to be overweight, since a cubic inch of muscle tissue weighs more than a cubic inch of fat tissue. However, that's simply not true. BMI also doesn't take account bone density or the composition of a person's body.
We use a lot of different types of equipment at Habitat Health and Fitness in Lakeland, FL. For strength building, one of our favorites is kettlebells. Not only does working with kettlebells make the workout more intense, so you'll get more benefit in less time used, it also works the whole body and addresses other forms of fitness besides strength, such as balance, flexibility and endurance. Kettlebell workouts are great for people all fitness levels. It's all a matter of choosing the right weight of kettlebell and learning the proper form.
Have you recently had an injury or suffered from an overuse injury? Does arthritis or bursitis cause pain when you move your knee. If you've already seen your doctor, and he gave the okay to exercise, finding movements that are kind to your knees is important. In some cases, your doctor may even suggest physical therapy where you'll get a list of exercises that not only build strength and provides a cardio workout, also can build strength around the knee muscle and help relieve pain.
If you want great looking abs and a flat belly that tells the world you're fit, it takes work. At Habitat Health and Fitness in Lakeland, FL, we help you achieve that goal. We provide workouts for a flat stomach, but it takes more than that. Great looking abs start in the kitchen and continue in the gym. It doesn't matter how fit you are, if there's a layer of fat covering that flat tummy, nobody will know. You may have the best abs, but won't have a flat stomach.