Best exercise for fat burn
 

Hello,
I am new to fit day and i'm keen to get you guys' opinons on the kind of work outs im doing!
Im 18 and after realising that no longer can i do no exercise and eat what i want Ive started a new lifestyle plan.
Im 11.7 stone, which is about 73kg and 163 pounds i think, but Im not happy with my body atall and the layers of fat that cover my abs, legs and arms really arent welcome anymore!
Im around 5'8
So far im eating around 1600 calories a day but doing 500 calorie workouts in the form of interval training on the treadmill, 5 minutes on the rowing machine, 5 minutes on the bike, ab exercises and a little bit of free weights on the arms.
Do i need to up my calorie intake to 2000 to make sure i hit around 1500 calories a day?
Im a complete begginner so please be nice if i am talking complete utter nonsense right now :)
And does anyone have any tips or advice on the best workout for fat burn?
Thanks in advance

Hi Elley,

Your interval workouts are a good choice. Anything that gets your heart rate up and keeps it there is good. If you enjoy it so that you stay with it over the long term so much the better. Your free weight workout is a good choice, you definitely want to add muscle, along with the obvious benefits, muscle burns more calories than fat so you'll be turning your fab body into a calorie and fat burning furnace! Good luck!

2,000 sounds high to me. If 1,600 is meeting your nutritional needs and you're dropping weight with it, I wouldn't up it. Well you can up it once in a while, but not as a baseline. I try and keep my deficit 500-1000 calories per day and my intake around 1,500, but I'm shorter and older.

The workout seems fine, but you may want to look for some different ones and change it up every now and then, because firstly the same routine day in and day out can get really boring (really fast) and because changing your workout will keep your muscles and metabolism guessing.

Aerobics to burn the fat
 

Hi Elley,
I agree with both of the previous posters. I would suggest that if your interval training is getting a little easy you might want to increase the time on each machine, or pick one or 2 and stick with them for 30 min or so.

The weight training is really important as Schilcott said, but in and of itself, won't burn many calories. What it does do, however, is give you more muscle to burn those calories with.

Keep it up!

Thank you all very much, today was weigh day (weighing myself once a week) and ive lost 6 pounds! i am not expecting anywhere near as much as that next week though, i know that soon it will even off and i will (hopefully) be consistently losing around 1/2 pounds a week.

Congratulations Elley, keep it up!

elley, Congrats on the 6 lbs loss, that is fantastic. My advise for you is this. The amount of calories isn't as important as what you are eating. Make sure that you are eating veggies, fruit, and meats. Stay away from Carbohydrates and sugars, your body treats them them same. Lift heavy weights as you can doing squats, deadlifts, overhead press, overhead pull, bench press, rows and dips. Continue with the intervals, you will get so much more out of those than a long slow run.

thanks for the advice VTC17, do you have any low carb foods you can reccomend? ive obviously been tracking my calories through fit day and its alarming to see that even grapes hold a high amount of carbs! thats my challenge ive set for myself this week - to get carb intake down.

on an average day ill have oats with a sliced banana for breakfast, then throughout the day i will eat upto 8 different types of fruit and veg (carrots, broccoli, apples, kiwi fruit, oranges, tomatoes, pepper, lettuce etc) for protein i have tuna and cottage cheese mixed together and put them on oatcakes or ryvita. then for tea i have either some more meat or fish along with steamed vegetables and some form of potato. any advice/alterations you can suggest to that?
Elley

Sounds pretty good. The one veggie to be careful with is potatoes and corn. I'll have a yam once a week but completely stay away from regular potatoes. Everyone is different, the key is to find out how many carbs you can eat and not gain. Here is a web site with lots of good info.
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