Fire Up Your Metabolism by Robert D. Franklin

Ask 20 people you know what type of exercise they should be doing to burn fat and fire up their metabolism and they may all tell you the same thing... do about 40 minutes of moderately-paced aerobic exercise on some type of fitness machine for 3-5 times per week.

They may even emphasize that more times during the week is better.

What's wrong with that scenario? Because that continues to be the mainstream recommendation for fat burning by a lot of fitness professionals. Get to and stay at a certain target heart rate for about 1/2 hour or so a few days in the week. Solution: there is certainly a better, more effective way!

No telling, you will burn calories while you’re running running or moving in place, but you won’t make drastic changes in your physique with this type of exercise regimen.

In fact, it might even be counterproductive to burning fat. Why?

Long duration, lower intensity aerobics calls upon your stored body fat for energy during the sessions. This may sound good to you, but it can actually create more body fat in your reserve after the workout is over to prepare it for the next workout.

What’s worse, it trains your cardiovascular system to be efficient. Also, your heart and lungs can actually reduce their capacity for work as they are getting more efficient at doing easy work, which reduces their ability to handle stress.

This could lead to all sorts of other problems including higher change of heart attack. Basically, you are only working within your current aerobic capacity because it's not challenged to go beyond its capability. For that matter, anything that is easy won't yield effective results.

What you should do is challenge your body to increase its capacity, so that it is stronger and able to deal with stress more easily. How, you ask?

Resistance training is the fastest and most efficient way to rev up your metabolism, burn fat faster, and develop lifelong health and fitness is to add lean muscle. If you are seeking out life changing results in the quickest possible time, get stronger and build some muscle. When you add lean muscle to your body you will turn into a fat burning machine.

Let’s say that you were eating the amount of calories that allow you to maintain your current bodyweight, but began to add lean muscle to your body through proper resistance training…you’ll need to use some of those calories you’re eating to feed the new muscle, creating a calorie deficit in your body.

In addition, when you stimulate your body with proper resistance training, the repair and growth process will call upon your stored body fat for energy. This calorie deficit combined with the repair and growth process will allow you to burn fat all day long, every day. You’ll even get these fat burning effects when you’re sitting around doing nothing at all.

Also, properly conducted resistance training actually increases your heart and lung’s capacity for work. By placing intense demands on your body, it is forced into being ready for anything you throw at it. This makes you more resistant to cardiovascular health problems that plague most people…even those that exercise with aerobics frequently.

And the great thing is that you don’t have to spend much time working out to get the fat loss effects. You can more than likely accomplish this in 2 or 3 weekly workouts that last between 20 and 30 minutes, and even less time at an advanced level.

This works because you're using efficiency and it will help keep you lean and healthy for the long term.