How to Cut Fat & Use Anaerobic Exercise to Burn Fat

Although aerobic exercises such as walking or jogging burn fat more efficiently than anaerobic exercises such as weightlifting or strength training, anaerobic exercise and a low-fat diet play an important role in fat loss. In addition to 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends you engage in strength training, which is anaerobic, twice weekly. As you lose the weight through dieting, anaerobic exercise will help define and tone your muscles, giving you a leaner appearance.

Things You'll Need

• Gym shoes
• Weights or exercise bands
• Water bottle

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Instructions

Cutting Fat

• 1

  Include fats in your diet, as they supply calories, satisfy you and contain essential fatty acids that absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Follow the United States Department of Agriculture nutrition guidelines for adults by limiting your total fat intake, however, to 20 to 35 percent of your daily calories.

• 2

  Replace saturated fatty acids, which are solid at room temperature, with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are liquid at room temperature. Choose plant-based fats but exclude coconut oil, palm kernel oil and palm oil. Cut down on your total consumption of animals, choosing seafood over other kinds of meat.

• 3

  Cut out trans fatty acids by limiting foods containing partially hydrogenated oils. Although trans fatty acids are unsaturated, they have a different structure and effect than naturally occurring unsaturated fats. Hydrogenated vegetable oil, for example, is solid at room temperature and it does not have the same health benefits as vegetable oil.

Anaerobic Fat Burning

• 4

  Choose workouts such as lifting weights, working with resistance bands, pushups, situps, yoga, or yard work such as digging or shoveling to get an anaerobic workout. Follow the recommendations of the CDC by including all of your major muscle groups -- your legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms.

• 5

  Decrease or eliminate your rest periods in between sets to increase your heart rate and calorie burn. Lifting weights, for example, at a moderate level of intensity burns 262 calories an hour for a 168-pound person, whereas lifting weights at a vigorous level will almost double your calorie burn, increasing it to 463 per hour, according to the website Health Status.

• 6

  Add interval training to your anaerobic workouts. Interval training keeps your workouts more exciting and helps you lose more fat, according to MayoClinic.com. Interval training incorporates aerobic conditioning into your anaerobic workout. You can, for example, complete a set of biceps curls, followed by a set of jumping jacks to increase your heart rate and burn more fat.

• 7

  Use circuit training, which is completing one set of each kind of anaerobic exercise consecutively in your program, rather than finishing three or four sets of one kind of exercise before proceeding to the next. Repeating the entire circuit two or three times without resting between exercises will increase your heart rate and increase your fat burning.