Intense Cardio Exercises For Fat Burning

Cardio exercise helps you burn body fat by creating a discrepancy in the number of calories you consume and the number your body needs to meet energy demands. Body fat comes from excess calories in your diet that your body stores for later use. When you access this reserve, your body converts fat to glycerol and fatty acids that break down to produce energy.

Identification

The higher the intensity of your cardio workout, the more fat you burn overall. The intensity of an exercise is measured by metabolic equivalents, which provides a measurement for exertion based on the amount of energy expended when sitting quietly, explains the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To qualify as a vigorous-intensity exercise, an activity must require at least six times as much energy as sitting quietly. High-intensity cardio burns 7 or more calories per minute.

Factors

Because vigorous-intensity cardio exercises burn more calories overall than moderate- to low-intensity workouts, your body burns more fat. However, when you exercise aerobically, your body uses available carbohydrates before it starts to burn stored fat. The longer you exercise, the more fat you burn. Even shorter sessions ultimately help you burn fat as long as you're burning more calories through exercise and metabolism than you're consuming. You lose a pound of body fat for every 3,500 calories you cut through diet and exercise.

Types

Examples of vigorous-intensity workouts include walking at 5 mph, running, back packing, rock climbing, step aerobics, jumping jacks, singles tennis and competitive sports. Any aerobic activity that raises your heart beat and taxes your breathing to the point that you can't complete a sentence without taking a breath every few words indicates a high-intensity exercise. However, don't count out lower-intensity exercises to help you burn fat. The American Council on Exercise, ACE, confirms that low-intensity cardio burns a higher percentage of calories from fat than workouts at higher intensity. It's because higher intensity cardio burns more calories overall than less intense workouts that the amount of fat burned is technically still higher. The ACE notes that creating a calorie deficit is the primary factor in losing weight and body fat, regardless of the intensity of your cardio.

Considerations

It's important to adopt an exercise program that matches your fitness level and that you can stick with over time. The main objective when you're trying to lose fat is to burn extra calories so that your body is forced to tap into fat stores in order to supply your energy needs. If you counteract exercise by eating more, for example, you'll improve your cardiovascular health but you won't see any significant progress in fat loss.