The question of how often should I exercise to lose fat often arises and the answer is, of course, indeterminate. You can’t answer unless your current weight is known along with what your daily diet generally consists of, and your basal metabolic rate is also an important factor. Your BMR is the number of calories burned while your body is at rest, due to your circulation, breathing, etc.
The type of exercise is also important, and brisk walking is not as effective at burning calories as hard circuit training or vigorous aerobics. So basically the question of how often you should exercise to lose fat is unanswered. However, please provide the above ratings, an answer can be given, and it is ‘as many times as you like’.
It also depends on how much fat you want to lose. If you consider that your metabolism and weight are in balance when you are not gaining or losing weight week after week, then the more extra exercise you do, the faster you will lose weight; that weight loss should be fat if most of the exercise is aerobic (involving oxygen), although any initial rapid weight loss will likely be excess water.
There are basically two types of exercise: aerobic exercise that involves a lot of breathing (running, swimming, biking, rowing, step-ups, etc.) and anaerobic exercise that involves little or no breathing (weight lifting, sprinting). In aerobic exercise, your body’s cells use glucose and oxygen for energy, and once your blood glucose levels have been depleted and all of the carbohydrates in your diet have been converted to glucose, your body will turn to fat. as a source of carbohydrates to metabolize more glucose to provide the energy needed to continue exercise.
In less efficient anaerobic exercise, there is not enough oxygen to convert glucose into energy, so your body will use alternative mechanisms known as lactic acid fermentation and anaerobic glycolysis to generate energy. This is not as efficient as aerobic glycolysis, so anaerobic activity will result in less weight loss, but more muscle fiber generation. So there is exercise and “exercise”, and when discussing “how much” you have to be more specific on what you have in mind.
Basically though, to lose fat you have to consume more calories than you eat, so the answer to the question also partially depends on your diet. The fewer carbohydrates you eat, including fats, grains, starches, and sugars, the less exercise you will need to lose fat. However, there is also the fact that the more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolic rate, where more calories are consumed while sleeping or resting. Here again, you can exercise less than normal to lose weight.
There are ways to find out roughly how many calories you eat over the course of your normal day, and if you know your body fat index (BFI), how much of your weight is fat, you can calculate your basal metabolic rate quite easily. Otherwise, it is a function of your age, weight, and height. However, most people have no idea of their BFI, so they rely heavily on educated guesses rather than calculated figures on the amount of exercise needed to lose fat at a reasonable rate (about 2-3 pounds per week ).
What many do is adopt a specific exercise regimen and then record their daily and weekly weight loss. Typically, they will lose a few pounds quickly as they shed excess water contained in their body cells, and then a reduced rate of weight loss as they burn off the fat contained in their fat cells for energy. From that, they can judge how much additional exercise they need to achieve a specific rate of fat loss.
Fat doesn’t just go away – your body uses it as a carbohydrate source to convert it to glucose once the carbohydrate content of your diet has been depleted. In fact, if you substitute protein for carbohydrates from your diet, you will lose fat faster, because your body will depend on the carbohydrate component of protein for glucose and then switch to fat. The amino acid content of the protein will be used to build more muscle fiber, which in turn increases the metabolic rate which in turn leads to a higher conversion of fat to glucose.
So by keeping a good amount of protein in your diet instead of regular carbs, you can accelerate fat loss and muscle growth. However, keep in mind the need for a little fat in order to get enough fat-soluble vitamins A, E, and K, so don’t just eat protein. This is one of the weaknesses of the Atkins high protein diet – the need for additional nutritional supplements – and it’s where Atkins made much of his money.
So how often should I exercise to lose fat? As often as you like, but be sure to exercise at a fast enough rate to burn more energy than you consume, and any exercise above that rate will allow you to lose fat even faster.