Cardiovascular exercise is excellent for your physical and mental health. But to turn running, cycling or swimming workouts into legitimate fat burners, it pays to have a slightly smarter approach than simply plodding it out session after session. And that means you need to make at least some of your cardio – whether in or out the gym – short, sharp and intense.
If you’ve tried and failed to lose weight before, the chances are you started doing more running or cycling, especially longer-distance jogs or rides. But while steady-state cardio – which is when you run, cycle or swim at a consistent and comfortable intensity for a significant amount of time – has many health benefits, maximising fat loss isn’t one of them. That’s because this type of endurance-based exercise doesn’t push your heart, lungs and muscles hard enough to significantly initiate the process by which your body is forced to start tapping into fat cells to release fuel for energy.
Fat loss efforts are then often further hampered by eating huge
