These days almost everyone is concerned with losing weight or more importantly losing fat. I am asked more questions about this topic than all others and it is an obvious source of confusion for many people. The problem is there are many different opinions about the best way to lose fat and most have at least some truth to them.

One popular strategy suggests concentrating on the percentage of calories from fat that you burn during the exercise. This leads to recommendations for exercising at a particular intensity/heart rate, which is often called the fat burning zone. This sounds like a good way to figure out how to exercise for maximal fat burning, but when you exercise to burn the highest percentage of fat, you end up burning fewer total calories, because the exercise intensity is too low.

Another common strategy is to focus on the total number of calories burned during your workout instead of the actual fat calories. This is recommended because unless you burn more calories throughout the day than you consume, you will never lose fat, regardless of the percentage of calories you burn while exercising. This is true, but just looking at the number or type of calories burned while exercising never gives you the full story.

There are however other important factors that are often overlooked when determining how to exercise for optimal fat loss. First, some types of exercise, such as resistance training, may not burn a lot of calories during the actual workout, but your body will keep burning calories at a higher rate for many hours after you stop exercising. This increased calorie burning effect will vary depending on the duration, intensity, and type of exercise. As a result, it becomes very difficult to accurately determine how many calories are really burned due to your workout.

Fortunately, knowing how many calories or how much fat you burn while exercising is not as important as you might think. The real issue is how your workout affects your metabolism. Increasing your metabolism is by far the most beneficial thing you can do to improve long-term fat loss. Your metabolism is responsible for burning many more calories than exercise and if your main goal is fat loss, you should focus on increasing your metabolism as much as possible.

Increasing the body’s metabolism is a complicated issue that is affected by genetics, exercise, nutrition, and a number of other lifestyle factors. Since this article is about exercise and this issue is too large to be properly addressed in this article, I will concentrate on a basic strategy to help improve your metabolism.

This strategy essentially has 2 main goals, preventing muscle loss and challenging your body. Muscle has a significant influence on your metabolic rate and every pound of muscle burns about 30 calories per day. If you stop doing exercises that stress your muscles, you will start losing muscle and your metabolism will slow down. Moderate to high intensity resistance training (weights, bodyweight exercises, etc.) is an ideal choice for this type of workout.

As a general rule, you should perform exercises that are difficult enough that you are unable to perform 15 reps; 6 to 12 reps per exercise is a good range. This may be more intense than your usual workout, but if you only have enough time for a short workout, it will be enough intensity to retain your current level of muscle. Also, since your exercise time will be short and the number of total sets will be low, you shouldn’t have to worry about gaining muscle or bulking up. Bodybuilders have large muscles mainly because they perform an excessive number of sets, sometimes 20-30 per muscle group, not because they lift heavier weights.

The overall workout only needs to be 15-30 minutes long and you have some options as to how to design the workout. You can do 1 set of many different exercises, multiple sets of a few exercises or anything in between. With the increased intensity of the exercises, you probably won’t want to exercise much longer anyway.

I also suggest performing a higher percentage of leg exercises (squats, lunges, etc.) than usual. This is because your largest muscles are in your legs and exercises that stress large muscles create a greater overall demand on the body and produce better metabolic improvements. Try for 35 – 40 % leg exercises if your workout is 30 minutes and around 50% if the workout is closer to 15 minutes. This approach will also maximize the number of calories burned during the workout and result in more calories being burned throughout the day.

If you would rather perform endurance activities (running, biking, etc.), you can apply the same principles of increasing the intensity to make the exercise more demanding. Perhaps the best method is to replace a constant intensity aerobic workout with a shorter interval training workout. This involves alternating between your normal pace and much more challenging pace. For example if you are a runner, you could alternate between running for 1 minute at your regular speed and sprinting for 30 seconds.

Regardless of which approach you take, you should feel about as fatigued at the end of your short workout as you do after a regular length workout. However, if you are not accustomed to more intense training, it is important to start out slowly and let your body adapt to the training. It is very important not to overdo it or push yourself too hard. You want to feel fatigued, but not run down or excessively sore. Also, even though the workout is short, you still need to warm up before the workout and stretch/cool down after you finish.

Keep in mind this strategy does not represent a complete well-rounded fitness program and is not intended to replace your existing program. It is especially useful during times when you may have a limited amount of time to exercise, such as while traveling and it is also beneficial for adding variety to your program. I chose this approach so people with different workout routines and overall goals could apply the strategy to their individual situations.

Look at your existing program and determine how to apply this information to benefit your most. In addition, be sure to remember that nutrition and lifestyle factors (sleep, stress, etc.) are always important too. You can have the best exercise program in the world and if you have bad nutrition and lifestyle habits you will still have a hard time losing fat.