What is in this article?

1. 11 Fat Burning Workouts
2. The science behind why the fat burning workouts work

As many of you have experienced, the secret to my success is boosting your metabolism. The Metabolic Boost program was developed as a result of research for my masters degree in nutrition. However nutrition is not the only part of the equation. While nutrition plays a bigger role than most of us would like to admit, exercise is also key to boosting your metabolism. (By now you have probably realised that you can’t eat everything you want just because you run.)

Fat Burning Specific Routines

The following 11 workouts are designed for fat burning. If you want to know how the workouts work read the next couple of paragraphs. (If you are not interested in how they work, you just want to get started – skip to Fat Burning Workouts Described, where the workouts are listed.)

All of the workouts are in this article. At the bottom of the article there is a PDF file with each fat burning workout listed on a separate page. (The PDF file is slightly “prettier”; I didn’t spend much time on formatting.) You can print the workouts, then laminate them or put into a baggie and carry them with you to the gym. In the PDF file, I made the type large enough to be seen clearly while you are mid-workout.

If you find this useful let me know in the comments. If you would like something similar but different, let me know that as well.

How these workouts burn fat

Your body is designed to store fat. As far as your body knows, it will need to draw on that fat for survival one day. It does not want to let go of it very easily. Your goal with these workouts is to overcome your body’s lipolytic sensitivity (in layman’s terms, fat storage mode). It has been proven that the higher the workout intensity the more likely the body’s physiological response to overcome lipolytic sensitivity and let go of the fat.

Fat hormones bind to either alpha or beta receptors. Which one depends on your body’s lipolytic sensitivity. While the details are beyond the scope of this article, alpha-receptor dominance results in fat hormones stubbornly refusing to budge. High intensity exercise overcomes this problem. That is, these routines convince your body to “un-bind” that fat.

Forget all that hogwash you have heard about “fat burning zones”. To burn fat you need to up the ante. (Well, forget their hogwash, not mine. I am talking about those charts you probably saw in your gym admonishing you for getting your heart rate too high. If you want to know more, leave a question in the comments section.)

So if high intensity exercise is the answer, why not go all out all the time?

There are two reasons for this:

1. While high intensity exercise breaks down fatty acids in your cells, high intensity exercise does not burn fatty acids as a fuel. (That is the basis of the “fat burning zone” myth.) Since we want to burn the fat, we use interval workouts. All this means is that you switch between high intensity and lower intensity exercise DURING each workout. Switching between high and low intensity creates that magic bullet.
2. You can’t go all out for a long enough period of time to burn significant calories. if you work out at the highest intensity you can you probably won’t be able to work out for very long. The conclusion is that it’s better to incorporate “rest intervals”, which results in more time spent exercising, than an all out high intensity routine that would likely be short-lived. You know this empirically – can you sprint as long as you can jog?

For optimal fat burning, do these workouts 2-3 times a week

The first exercise is for beginners. If you are just learning about interval training, start with the basic concept and then build in some of the other routines as you progress.

Workouts #2-7 vary in length; you can choose how long you want to workout on any given day. The workouts use a variety of gym machines so you don’t get bored doing the same exercise over and over. Some of these workouts are pretty difficult, so listen to your body. You won’t lose anything by taking it down a notch until you can complete the prescribed workout at the prescribed intensity!! You will get better results from hitting the high intensity as hard as you can, so choose a workout that allows you to exercise at maximum effort during the high intensity sections. Conversely you should be wiped out when you finish. This is not one of those workouts where you can read a magazine or talk to your neighbor. Don’t fool yourself.