Information on How to Burn Fat

When you're overweight, it's because your body is storing fat. Storing too much fat is a problem: According to the American Council on Exercise, being overweight puts you at a higher risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke. To reduce your risk of weight-related disease, and to improve your overall health, you must burn away the excess fat from your body. Burning fat requires a basic understanding of why your body accumulates it in the first place, and what small lifestyle changes you need to make.

Instructions

• 1

  Eat fewer calories each day. Eating fewer calories than your body uses each day will cause it to burn fat for energy. Determine your average caloric intake by counting the calories you eat daily, for seven days. Add the resulting numbers, and divide the total by seven to find your average. Subtract 300 to 500 calories from your daily average to cause your body to burn fat.

• 2

  Exercise for 30 minutes a day, four to five days a week. Exercise gets your muscles moving and causes your body to expend energy. This increases the amount of calories, and fat, that you burn each day. In addition, your body will burn fat at an accelerated rate for up to 12 hours following a workout. Examples of exercise to try include swimming, cycling, jogging, hiking, rollerblading, skipping rope and stair climbing.

• 3

  Increase your daily physical activity. Every movement your body makes uses energy, and therefore burns fat. Making small changes in your daily life will result in your body burning fat without greatly altering your schedule. Changes to consider include parking further away from work or the grocery store, taking the stairs, or replacing your office chair with a balance ball.