It is true that you must exercise for at least 30 minutes to begin to achieve fat burning - but that's at the time you are exercising. Brief bursts of intense anaerobic exercise does something that even quite a lot of low to medium intensity aerobic exercise does not. Intense anaerobic exercise stimulates the production of growth hormone, which is a strong stimulator of fat burning. The thing is, the release of growth hormone triggered by intense anaerobic exercise comes 24 to 48 hours AFTER the exercise, and then it produces considerably more fat burning than is possible with all but extremely long periods of low to medium intensity aerobic exercise.

Because of this effect, most people will lose weight much more easily by doing shorter periods of more intense exercise. 20 to 40 minutes of heavy weightlifting, interval training (which could be done on foot, on a bicycle, swimming, kickboxing, etc.Any kind of activity in which there are periodic bursts of intense exertion interspersed with rest periods, or periods of low intensity activity is typically preferable in the long run for weight control than even long hours of lower intensity aerobic exercise.

Now, you'll notice that I said "most people". There is an exception to the rule. Anyone who is seriously emotionally or physically stressed in his or her daily life is prone to overstimulated adrenal glands. The adrenal glands do a lot of things in the body, but with regards to weight loss, they produce two hormones. One hormone is cortisol, which promotes fat deposition in the lower abdomen. This is typically a saggy, pendulous fat held below the waistline. The other hormone the adrenals produce is adrenaline (also called epinephrine), which actually promotes fat burning. Since the adrenals produce cortisol which causes fat deposition and adrenaline which promotes fat burning, you might assume that these two hormones cancel each other out. Unfortunately, cortisol production can be carried out by a much longer time by the adrenal glands than can the production of adrenaline, so long-term, the effects of high cortisol production (deposition of fat in the lower belly), will overcome whatever fat burning might occur from the short-term adrenaline production.

The adrenals are influenced by physical stress as well as mental stress, so for someone who is under a lot of stress in general in his or her life, high-intensity exercise will only add to the total stress and will tend to make the adrenals produce a lot of cortisol, and therefore will tend to promote lower abdomen weight gain. That's right - the wrong kind of exercise in this situation can cause weight gain! This can be the source of considerable frustration when one is faced with the situation in which he or she is working out very hard to burn off that lower belly bulge, but never can seem to get rid of it. Due to the fact that the intense exercise is causing even more cortisol to be produced, their efforts are counterproductive. Because of this effect, it is recommended that people under a lot of stress and/or who have most of their weight held in the lower abdomen stick to relatively low intensity aerobic exercise. This type of exercise tends to help with stress control and lowers cortisol levels, allowing the lower belly fat to gradually be burned off.

I hope that this article has given you a better concept of how to maximize your exercise routine for the best possible weight loss results.

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