Fat Burning Secrets


Training for my first half marathon opened my eyes to some amazing fat burning secrets.
Watch someone train and you will notice two things. First, they have a progressive schedule they stick to. They run almost every day, they do one long run each week, and they always push themselves a little.
The second thing you will notice is that they drop fat at an alarming rate. Just as the proven schedule gives them confidence that they will be able to conquer what seems like an insurmountable distance, the science behind the schedule also gives their body the tools it needs to burn high volumes of stored fat to fuel their journey.
So how does this training turn someone into a fat burning machine?
Here are three fat burning secrets that explain the mystery:
1 Running everyday increases their ability to use more oxygen to burn more fat.
To torch stored fat, you want to train aerobically to give your body lots of oxygen. This is the key difference from high intensity training where no oxygen is present, lactic acid forms, and no fat is burned. The guys in the gym are burning stored sugar, not stored fat. By increasing your aerobic capacity and VO2 max through consistent daily runs, you give your body the ability to process more oxygen and burn more fat.
2 The long runs actually increase the number of fat burning furnaces they have in their muscles.
Once your stored fat breaks down into free fatty acids it is transported into the mitochondria to be burned. These mitochondria are very important because they are the little furnaces in your cells that burn your fat. Prolonged exercise (90 minutes) encourages your body to respond by producing more fat burning mitochondria in your muscles. The magic is that after you create more fat burning machines, your body will eventually learn to prefer fat as its source for fuel. I couldn't believe how quickly my body fat went down when I started the longer runs. You create more fat-burning furnaces, burn more fat, buy new jeans.

3 By pushing, their body adapts so that it can run more miles in the same amount of time, burn more calories, and release more stored fat.

Many people stay aerobic by going extremely low intensity. The problem with that is that they end up in marathon cardio sessions without burning as much fat as they could. It is much better to exercise with a higher level of intensity but just below your anaerobic threshold. This means you are still using oxygen to burn fat but are pushing yourself to run faster and farther, thus burning more calories and more fat. As you push, you will increase your anaerobic threshold and will be able to keep increasing the amount of fat you can burn in the same amount of time. You want to feel pleasantly tired at the end of your workout, which is different from the feeling people have when they exercise at a low intensity and different from the absolute exhaustion they feel from high intensity exercise.

The Bottom Line - The secret to fat burning is to improve your ability to process oxygen and use fat for energy.
The secret to fat burning is to create the training conditions for high oxygen use. By running everyday with at least one long run per week you will increase the amount of oxygen available for fat burning, you will increase the number of fat burning furnaces you have, and you will be able to increase your intensity and calories/fat burned. Experience these fat burning secrets yourself by starting a half marathon schedule: you'll be surprised by how much you gain and how much you lose.

Learn more at http://www.MorePrimeTime.com, a site dedicated to sharing fitness and nutrition tips to make you look years younger and have more energy.


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