Everyone wants to know how to exercise most efficiently as burn the maximum amount of fat and calories in the minimum amount of time. Here are 2 major, key strategies that you should use in whatever type of exercise you are doing in order to burn the most calories you can.

As a guide the average person who is averagely fit would burn 80-100 calories per 10 minutes of exercise. So that’s 500-600 calories an hour. But this could be drastically less if you are doing the wrong things, and drastically more (over 1000 per hour is not out of the question) if you are doing the right things. Here are the 2 key strategies;

1/ Keep your heart rate as high as possible. This doesn’t mean you have to buy a heart rate monitor. It some cases it helps people to keep working hard and keep their heart rate up but it’s by no means a necessity. Just work as hard as you can and push yourself constantly and your heart rate will take care of itself.

Why do you have to work hard? Simple – the higher you heart rate, the harder your body has to work to cope and the more calories you burn as a result.

2/ Work as many muscle groups as possible in each exercise. The more muscles you work per exercise the more calories you burn. It’s simple when you actually think about it but you would be amazed how many people do ‘isolation exercises.’ This means just working 1 or few muscle groups per exercise. An example of an isolation exercise would be a bicep curl of those… Read more->

What do you do if you want to get in a good cardiovascular, heart-pumping workout but you don’t have a fitness machine, such as a cross trainer or a treadmill? Easy. Try the following home cardio workout that requires no equipment and will give you a better, more varied cardio workout than any machine.

1/Star Jumps – 50 reps

Stand with arms by your sides. Jump out sideways with both legs and raise you arms up to shoulder height at the same time. Touch down with your feet and jump back in. Repeat.

2/ Jumping Lunges – 30 reps

Start with 1 leg forward and the other leg back. Jump switching the position of the legs each time and bending both knees on contact with the floor. Repeat.

3/ Side Jumps – 40 reps

Imagine a line down the centre of your floor. Jump up and over it, side to side (feet together).

4/ Squat jumps – 20 reps

Hands on the floor with legs out straight behind you. Jump forwards and backwards as far as you can, keeping your feet together.

5/ Box Jumps - 8 boxes each way

Imagine a four sided square box on the floor. Keeping your feet together jump around all four corners of the box. Keep moving at all times. Change direction half way through.

Today’s Takeaway – This will take you about 3/4 minutes if done quickly. This alone will tire you out, do 3/4 circuits of it to get a really good cardio workout.

I am often asked how much exercise is necessary to actually lose weight and make a difference. This is not a simple question, but I will try to answer it as succinctly as possible.

Firstly, any exercise, even if we are only talking 5/10 mins a day will make a difference. Even if you are not exercising for long enough to burn that many calories, the exercise will have a boosting effect on your metabolism, i.e. you will burn more fat. So some is always better than none.

But if you are looking to make more large-scale changes and do it quickly,  a little more exercise is required. Losing weight is not an exact science, i.e. if you burn 3500 calories a week (1 pound) it doesn’t necessarily mean you will lose that much weight each and every week. But if you stick with it the numbers will balance out over time.

So let’s say the average person burns 500 calories per hour of exercise. It is certainly possible to burn more than this with hard work, but 500 is a good, conservative estimate. And let’s say your post workout calorie burn due to the workout is also 500 calories (this figure is dependent on your metabolism). So all in all that’s 1000 calories an hour.

1 pound of bodyweight is 3500 calories. So on this basis you would need to do 3.5 hours exercise to lose 1 pound per week. And if you did 1 hour every day, that would be a total of 7000 calories, and 2 pounds weight loss. Obviously this loss doesn’t take into account any loss you could be getting from improvements… Read more->

It’s the start of a brand New Year, so now is the time to start about reaching your fat loss goals for 2012. Here is my New Year Fat Loss Guide to set you on the right track to reaching your fat loss goals.

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Get rid of calorie dense foods.

I often work with people that tell me ‘I really don’t eat that much, I can’t understand why I don’t lose weight.’ Whilst portion size is obviously an important factor, it is not nearly as important as the TYPE of food you are eating. It’s all very well not eating much, but if what you are eating is calorie dense you are still going to have a high total calorie intake.

For example, a small chocolate can contain up to 100 calories. A small biscuit up to 200 calories. Think how easy it would be to go through a few chocolates and a few biscuits a day. You could be up at 1000 calories without even feeling like you have really eaten anything. And of course because they have no good nutritional value they will make your body crave more food rather than filling you up.

Chocolates and biscuits are just 2 examples. Cheese, crisps, cakes and of course alcohol are just a few other calories dense foods.

Compare these 2 sweet foods;

100 gram chocolate brownie; 400 calories

100 grams blueberries; 55 calories.

I know you may be thinking ‘yeah but I would rather have the brownie.’ Well that may be true, but the blueberries… Read more->