Carrying around excess fat brings more than the risk of feeling bad about your appearance; extra weight also increases your risk of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. Men tend to store excess weight in their bellies more than women, and large amounts of belly fat can pose serious health risks. Doing fat-burning exercises can improve men's health by waging war on excess fat.
Fat-Burning Basics
To burn fat, your body needs to burn more calories than you consume. So before stepping up your workout plan, make sure you eat a nutritious diet that is low enough in calories to burn off every day. Use the USDA's Daily Food Plan to help you calculate how much food to eat for your body weight, height and activity level.
The second part of the calorie-burning equation is exercise. Doing a mix of cardio and strength-training workouts can help you burn calories, boost your metabolism, burn fat and gain muscle mass.
Cardio
Cardio exercise elevates your heart rate for a sustained period with activities such as walking, running, cycling, swimming, using an elliptical machine or playing team sports such as basketball, soccer, hockey or tennis. Cardio workouts burn calories that may otherwise get stored as excess fat.
The amount of calories you burn depends on the duration and intensity of your workouts. Do at least 30 minutes of moderately intense cardio activities five times a week for good health. If you want to burn more fat, add intensity or time to your workouts.
Strength Training
Strength training boosts your metabolism to help your body burn more fat, as well as increases lean muscle mass, which burns more calories than fat tissue. To build more muscle, lift heavier weights and do a smaller amount of reps, "Men's Fitness" magazine advises.
Choose strengthening exercises that work all of your major muscle groups, including your legs, arms, shoulders, chest, abs, glutes and back. To give your metabolism an extra boost, shorten your rest time between weight sets, but do not cut your rest time below 30 seconds, advises in "Men's Fitness."
Circuits
Circuit training burns fat by mixing high-intensity cardio moves with strength training. To do a circuit workout, add a variety of high-intensity cardio exercises to your workout, such as jumping jacks, sprinting, jumping rope or fast cycling. Do two to three minutes of aerobics, depending on your fitness level, then do 30 seconds to one minute of resistance training.
A sample circuit workout includes five minutes of slow jogging to warm up, two minutes of sprinting, one minute of pushups, two minutes jumping rope, one minute of crunches, two minutes of running stairs, one minute of squats with weights, two minutes of jumping jacks, one minute of lunges with weights, two minutes sprinting and one minute of planks. Finish with a five-minute jog to cool down.
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