I’m sure you know that exercise is a hugely important piece of the puzzle when it comes to health and fitness. The thing is, there’s a lot of confusing and conflicting information out there. 

It’s super easy to get discouraged and frustrated, I hear you! 

If you want to burn fat, your ultimate goal in fitness should be to work on developing amazing aerobic function. 

What’s your current exercise routine? Hit reply and let me know. 

So let’s dive into that a little. 

Exercise is either aerobic or anaerobic. Those terms refer to the presence and absence of oxygen, respectively. 

Aerobic systems use mainly fat for energy. 

Anaerobic systems use mainly sugar for energy. 

During aerobic exercise, you breathe faster and deeper than normal, maximizing the amount of oxygen in the blood. 

During anaerobic exercise, your body needs immediate energy. It relies on stored energy, rather than oxygen for fuel, including breaking down sugar (glucose). 

Basically, the cells in our body prefer to get their energy from using oxygen to fuel metabolism. When this happens (during aerobic exercise), muscle cells can contract repeatedly without getting tired. 

But during anaerobic exercise (higher intensity/ weight lifting) non-oxygen conditions, muscle cells have to rely on other reactions that don’t need oxygen in order to fuel muscle contraction.

What does this mean? 

We have to be careful with exercise as certain types can create damage to our bodies that actually make it harder to lose fat, as well as aging us faster. 

Problems with Excessive Cardio: 

Over-exercising, such as long periods of high intensity aerobic exercise or high intensity cardio can lead to stress in the body. 

Stress has the most negative impact on your aerobic system. It programs your body to burn less fat and more sugar. 

Think of it this way - your body’s main goal is to keep you alive. When you over-perform cardio, your body sees this as too much energy expenditure, so it adjusts to compensate. 

It does that so that you can survive for longer while taking part in what the body sees as a very stressful activity. Your body decreases production of the thyroid hormone, T3. 

T3 is the body’s main regulator of metabolism. When there is not enough, the body will accumulate body fat to increase efficiency and preserve energy. 

This is one of the main reasons that training consistently for long-endurance type activities causes the body to adapt to conserve as much body fat as possible. After a while, the fat cells stop releasing fat to be burned. 

In short, pounding away at chronic high intensity cardio every day is literally programming your body to only burn calories and sugar, and not fat. 

Not only that but studies show you are also elevating cortisol levels which trigger muscle loss, and heart problems. 

Studies have also shown that long-distance running over a long time leads to high levels of inflammation that can damage your heart and accelerate the aging process through cellular damage.

Cardio Tips to Improve Fat - Burning Capabilities

• Change your routine and instead of doing one long duration cardio activity, do it twice a day for less time. 
• Stop exercising after 30 minutes, and don’t ever go longer than 45. After 45 minutes is when cortisol begins to rise and you start seeing less fat burning benefits.
• Practice 2-3 high intensity interval workouts for about 15 -20 minutes.
• Weight training should always come before cardio, as a warm up.
• Take deeper, fuller breaths during exercise to help fat burning.
• Do morning workouts. Maximum fat burning with cardio takes place in the morning on an empty stomach. You will be burning almost all fat if you do this.

The Takeaway 

It’s not the actual exercise that is the problem, it’s the amount that you are doing. 

Moderate cardio is amazing for the body, your health and your fat-burning goals but you need to incorporate strength training for the best results, and keep away from excessive cardio. As you build and strengthen your muscles, they will help you burn fat beyond your workouts. 

Just running or cycling at high intensity cannot offer that. The more muscle you have strengthened, the more energy your body actually ends up expending.