Aerobic exercise, also known as "cardio," is a repetitive motion of the arms and legs. Running is a good example of aerobic activity. When you are trying to get into shape, this form of exercise will not only improve your heart and lung health, but it can also contribute to fat reduction.
Process of Aerobic Exercise
When you do aerobic training, your core body temperature rises and you start to sweat to cool off. This in turn causes you to burn stored fat for energy, so cardio does in fact speed up fat loss.
Duration of Work
For cardio to be effective at burning fat, you need to do it often and long enough. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends 60 to 90 minutes of physical activity performed five days a week to lose weight. You can do this in one long session or you can split up your time and work out more than once a day. You still burn fat any way you do it.
Intense Form of Cardio
Interval training is a form of aerobic training that involves alternating your intensity back and forth from high to low. During the course of a workout, you end up burning more calories than with steady duration cardio. The better news is your body continues to burn a high amount of calories once you have completed your session; this is known in the fitness industry as "excess post-exercise oxygen consumption." This in turn enables you to burn a higher amount of fat while you are at rest.
Muscle
With some forms of aerobic exercise, you can adjust the resistance to place more emphasis on your muscles. Rowing, biking and elliptical training are examples. By gaining even marginal amounts of muscle, you will increase your resting metabolic rate and further promote fat burning. A single pound of added muscle for example, burns an extra 30 to 50 calories a day, according to the University of Michigan Health System. You can increase this effect even more by lifting weights two or three times a week.
Cutting Calories
If you do aerobic exercise regularly but eat an unhealthy diet, your fat loss results will be compromised. You actually run the risk of making no progress at all if your diet is really poor. To boost your results, consider cutting back on your daily intake of calories. If you couple a 500-calorie daily reduction with a 500-calorie burn through cardio, you can create a 1,000-calorie daily deficit. This would lead to about 2 lbs. of weight loss a week according to MedlinePlus.
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