Effective fat-burning exercise for a 44 year-old male.

[vienna1981]

I'm reasonably fit and do a physical job (airport baggage) but I'd like to shift some of excess belly. I go swimming when I can but I think I need to be doing more or something else.

Any suggestions please ?

Running or fast walking. For at least 30 mins, 3 x per week. Honestly it's the easiest and the best.

Cut down on calorie intake and do a few sit ups.

Can you play football? Join a team. Football is great.

Thanks Laguna. One or two considerations there. Unfortunately I can't stand football . I was thinking of buying a hula hoop.

Do the 5:2 diet alongside exercise. No amount of exercise will shift belly fat unless some serious diet changes are also done

Running. It's cheap, you can do it anytime, even a 20 minute jog will get you energised and boost your metabolism.

Do some Leslie sansone videos from you tube

Or Julian michaels

Unless you are seasoned to it, running on its own does not increase metabolism. You use glycogen when you run and after that in your bloodstream goes you convert muscle. So your muscle mass decreases and metabolism slows. Also when you finish you crave carbs and can quickly eat all, and more, of what you just burned off.

For fat burning do weights - for waist try sit ups with weight in hand (keep arms straight and push to ceiling then down in 3 or 4). Find exercises that use more than one muscle group - I can't remember the term but they are more effective than say, doing 100 crunches.

Try to avoid carb spikes as an overload will quickly be converted to fat; having a protein/fat and no carb breakfast will reduce cravings later. Also get a good sleep and go to bed early to make most of HGH surge around midnight, which if you aren't using it to grow, burns fat as long as you are in deep sleep. Lack of sleep encourages release of ghrelin, a hormone that makes you want to eat.

All of the above will probably be gainsaid by someone, as there are many theories. Google what I've said and you'll see the evidence; although this goes for all the assertions on this thread!

Thankyou everyone. I confess I'm not keen on the running idea but needs must. The hula hoop idea keeps running round my head .

You can't outrun a bad diet. This is the best advice I have ever received. I used to have a personal trainer who said that our weight is 80% about what we eat, and 20% exercise and I found this to be so true. Exercise never did anything for me until I took a serious look at what I was eating.

If you want to lose fat, then its much easier to do that through your diet than exercise. I'd need to swim really hard for 10 hours to create a 3500 calorie deficit (ie to shift 1lb of fat), but I can also do that by eating 500 calories less than I need everyday, or doing two 500cal days a week.

If you want to exercise more, cycling will let you really work out efficiently