What burns fat - What cardio machine burns the most belly fat
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Updated: May 12,2023
Which Workouts Burn The Most Fat? 18 Fat-Burning Exercises Compared.
No matter where you are on your fitness journey, almost all of us would like to lose body fat and put on muscle.
Even if you don’t want to lose “weight”—or perhaps you even want to put on some weight—most people are still interested in shifting their body composition so that they burn body fat and get more shredded with muscle and lean body mass.
Losing body fat isn’t just a matter of achieving a certain aesthetic. Excessive body fat increases the risk of certain health conditions such as metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure, and it can contribute to premature mortality.
When paired with a nutritious, calorie-controlled diet, exercise is a healthy, sustainable, and effective way to lose weight and burn fat.
Physical activity burns calories and can rev your metabolism and influence your hormonal profile.
However, when it comes to fat-burning workouts and weight loss, not all types of exercises are created equal. So, which workouts burn the most fat?
Certain workouts and exercises will help you torch calories and shift your metabolism into a fat-burning mode more so than others, so if you have big weight loss goals, or want to get toned, keep reading for the best fat-burning workouts.
In this guide, we will cover:
How Does Exercise Burn Fat? Which Workouts Burn The Most Fat? Fat-Burning Exercises Compared.
How Does Exercise Burn Fat?
Before delving into which workouts burn the most fat, it’s helpful to address what “fat burning” means.
When most people say they want to lose weight, they actually mean that they want to lose body fat.
“Weight” refers to lean mass as well, which includes muscle, bone, organs, etc., so fat-burning workouts are designed to help you lose body fat.
Importantly, exercise can help you lose body fat in several ways.
When you are physically active, your body burns stored fat for fuel to supply energy to the muscles to contract. Following a consistent workout routine can help you lose fat tissue if you’re in a caloric deficit. Certain workouts increase your metabolic rate and affect your hormones, which can help you burn more calories, even at rest.
Let’s look at each of these in more detail.
#1: Exercise Burns Stored Fat.
The first way that exercise burns fat, is that with any type of physical activity, the muscles have to create energy to perform work, so you oxidize, or burn, stored fuel for energy.
This stored fuel comes from a combination of stored carbohydrates (glycogen in muscles and the liver), stored fat (triglycerides in adipose, or fat, tissue), and stored protein in muscle tissue.
At pretty much any given exercise intensity, you’re burning some of every type of fuel, although carbohydrates and fat are the primary fuel sources for the muscles during exercise.
The relative percentage of each fuel source your body oxidizes for energy depends on the intensity and duration of the workout.
Interestingly, when you work out more vigorously, although you burn a greater number of calories overall, the relative percentage of these calories from fat decreases.
Although somewhat of a gross simplification, at lower intensities, fat is the primary fuel. That’s why exercise machines that have a pre-programmed workout in the “fat-burning zone” have you moving at a lower intensity for a steady-state effort.
As the exercise intensity increases, the relative percentage of carbohydrates increases significantly.
For example, if you think about heart rate zones, workouts done in zone 1 or zone 2 are predominantly fueled by burning fat, whereas more intense workouts in zones 3, 4, or 5, are primarily fueled by oxidizing carbohydrates, or glycogen, for energy.
Therefore, when you do a hard workout, a greater percentage of the calories you are burning are coming from stored carbohydrates rather than fat.
However, as mentioned, while stored fat will be serving as a smaller percentage of the calories burned, the total number of calories burned when you exercise at a vigorous intensity will be higher.
In this way, you still might burn more calories from fat during an intense workout.
Consider the following scenario when determining which workouts burn the most fat:
If you ride a stationary bike at a low intensity (heart rate in zone 2) for 30 minutes, you might burn 200 calories, of which 60% come from fat and 40% come from carbohydrates.
In this fictitious scenario, you would therefore burn 120 calories from fat and 80 from carbohydrates.
Note that protein usually provides less than 10% of the total energy needed for exercise except in extreme situations such as starvation, ketosis, or very long and intense workouts.
Then, imagine you do a hard workout on a spin bike with mostly zone 3 and zone 4, sort of a “tempo run” but on a bike. You again bike for 30 minutes, but this time, because you are cycling much harder and your heart rate was higher, you burned 400 calories.
Because the intensity was higher, carbohydrates supplied 60% of the energy and fat contributed 40%.
This means that you burned 240 calories from carbohydrates and 160 calories from fat.
Therefore, even though fat comprised a lower percentage of fuel you burned, you still burned more calories from fat than you did during the low-intensity “fat-burning zone” workout.
For this reason, it can be confusing when people talk about which workouts burn the most fat.
Theoretically, as just discussed, lower-intensity exercise burns a higher percentage of fat, but higher-intensity workouts may still burn more calories from fat as well as total calories.
The higher the total number of calories you burn—regardless as to the substrate they came from (carbohydrates or fat), the more weight, or body fat, you will lose.
This points to the second way that exercise burns body fat, referenced above. Let’s discuss this further.
#2: Exercise Burns Calories.
Body fat is essentially stored energy.
Every pound of body fat provides approximately 3,500 calories of energy, meaning that when you consume more calories than you expend, you’ll put on body fat at the rate of one pound per 3,500 excess calories.
Similarly, you’ll lose fat at the rate of one pound per 3,500-calorie deficit you create.
All forms of exercise burn calories, so your workouts can generate a caloric deficit and help you lower your body fat percentage.
Whether you choose to walk, swim, lift weights, take a yoga class, or do jumping jacks, you’ll expend a certain amount of calories based on the intensity of the workout, the muscles involved, your body weight and composition, and the duration of the workout.
Exercises performed at high intensities and that involve your entire body or large muscle groups will burn more calories than low-intensity exercises or those working isolated muscles.
#3: Exercise Increases Your Metabolic Rate.
Lastly, exercise increases your metabolic rate. While you always burn calories during the workout, you can also continue to burn more calories than your baseline rate for several hours after the workout, depending on the workout you did.
Referred to as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), this revving of the metabolism occurs because your body is trying to repair and restore everything back to baseline.
Furthermore, over time, a consistent exercise program can increase your overall metabolic rate as long as you’re building muscle because muscle is much more metabolically active than fat.
Thus, gaining muscle mass helps you burn more calories throughout the day, which can create that deficit you need to lose fat.
Now, let’s take a look at which workouts burn the most fat:
Which Workouts Burn The Most Fat? Fat-Burning Exercises Compared.
The best fat-burning workouts either torch a significant number of calories during the exercise, boost your metabolic rate afterwards, or help you become a fat-burning machine by putting on lean body mass.
Below, we will share which workouts burn the most fat.
#1: High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workouts, which involve repeated bouts of very vigorous exercise followed by easy recovery periods are one of the best workouts to burn fat.
Research indicates that HIIT workouts burn as many calories as a moderate-intensity, steady-state workout in one-third to one-half the time.
Moreover, the high intensity of HIIT significantly increases the EPOC after burn, revving your metabolism for up to 24 hours after exercise.
Great fat-burning HIIT exercises include plyometrics, running, cycling, stairs, jumping rope, and other bodyweight calisthenics.
#2: Strength Training.
Depending on the exercises you choose and weights you lift, strength training workouts can burn a decent number of calories.
Total-body exercises and compound moves like squats, deadlifts, and power cleans, especially with heavy weights, expend a lot of energy.
With that said, the real fat-burning payoff from strength training workouts comes from the metabolic benefits reaped from building muscle mass.
To best support muscle growth, use heavy weights for fewer reps.
#3: Plyometrics.
Plyometric exercises involve explosive movements and rapid force development.
You can think of plyometrics as “jumping exercises.” Examples include squat jumps, jumping rope, jumping jacks, burpees, and box jumps.
These exercises are not only cardiovascularly demanding, but they also involve large muscle groups.
As with HIIT workouts, plyometrics rev your metabolism for hours after the workout is over.
#4: Steady-State Cardio.
Exercises like running, cycling, swimming, rowing, hiking, stair climbing, and elliptical trainer workouts definitely burn a lot of calories, especially if your workouts are long, and/or vigorous.
The after burn will be less than a more intense workout, but consistent cardio workouts performed regularly can certainly contribute to generating the calorie deficit you need to burn stored fat.
When doing cardio, going up an incline will also increase your calorie burn.
The following table can be used as a guideline for approximately how many calories you burn by doing a certain activity for 30 minutes to help you determine which workouts burn the most fat.
The more calories you burn in 30 minutes, the greater caloric deficit, and thus fat loss, you can expect.
Exercise Activity 125-pound (56.8 kg) person 155-pound (70.5 kg) person 185-pound (84.1 kg) person Bicycling stationary, moderate 210 252 294 Rowing, stationary, moderate 210 252 294 Calisthenics: vigorous 240 306 336 Circuit Training: general 240 306 336 Running: 5 mph (12 min/mile) 240 288 336 Kettlebell training 240 296 353 Bicycling: 12-13.9 mph 240 288 336 Rowing, Stationary 255 369 440 Boxing sparring 270 324 378 Elliptical Trainer, moderate intensity 270 324 378 Ski Machine, moderate intensity 285 342 399 Aerobics, Step: high impact 300 360 420 Swimming laps, vigorous 300 360 420 Bicycling: 14-15.9 mph 300 360 420 Martial Arts: judo, karate, kickboxing 300 360 420 Bicycling, stationary, vigorous 315 278 441 Jumping Rope (Fast) 340 421 503 Running: 6 mph (10 min/mile) 495 360 420 Calories Burned Over 30 Minutes of Exercise.
Now that you know which workouts burn the most fat, you can use this information to help you efficiently burn calories and optimize your metabolism for mobilizing stored fat.
Keep in mind that any type of exercise can support your weight loss goals, so pick an activity you enjoy, or be sure to include lots of variety for optimal results.
To contribute to your weight loss goals, a healthy, nutritious diet is key to success. Here we have some of the best diets for athletes.
The 6 Best Cardio Machines for Weight Loss (And How to Use Them For Best Results)
When it comes to shedding pounds, you just can’t beat cardio machines.
While weights burn A LOT of (sugar-based) energy at once, cardio machines encourage a slower more fat-dominant energy burn.
The “low and slow” style of energy burn enables your body to activate stored fat and utilize it more efficiently.
If your goal is to burn more fat and lose weight, you’ll definitely want to incorporate plenty of cardio on cardio machines into your regular training.
The question we’re going to answer today is: which are the best cardio machines for weight loss?
Read on to find out which machines will help you to max out fat-burning, weight loss, and muscle growth to help you take your fitness to the next level.
Let’s get this thing going!
The Top Cardio Machines for Supercharged Weight Loss.
Below, we’ll take a closer look at the best cardio machines to help you step up your weight loss efforts, list their key benefits, and give them a rating to help you know where they stand in terms of effectiveness.
By the time you’re done with this list, you’ll know exactly which machines deserve a place in your training sessions!
Cardio Machine #1: Rowing Machine.
If you’ve ever worked out on a rowing machine, you’ll know exactly why it earned our #1 spot as the best cardio machine for weight loss overall!
The reason is simple: no other cardio machine on our list works the entire body.
When you go through the rowing motion, you work almost every single muscle in your body:
Upper back Shoulders Biceps Forearms Lower back Abs Glutes Quads Hamstrings Calves.
Read that list, and you can see the only three muscles missing are your pectorals, triceps, and obliques. Otherwise, it’s a highly effective “Pull” workout that demands effort from the majority of your muscles.
What’s great about the rowing machine is that you can start off easy to warm up, then pick up the intensity to make it as demanding a workout as you can handle.
Alternate between high and low intensity to go the HIIT route, increase the difficulty to add a bit more muscle-building, or go for a low-and-slow hour-long rowing workout to maximize fat-burning.
It’s an incredibly versatile option when it comes to working out, and it’s excellent for training your posterior chain muscles from your shoulders down to your legs.
Rowing at 100 watts—roughly 2:30 per 500 meters, which is a moderate pace—you can burn up to 700 calories in an hour.
Our Rating: 10/10.
Cardio Machine #2: Treadmill (for HIIT)
On most lists of the “best cardio machines for weight loss”, the treadmill will be present (because it’s awesome!) but ranked much lower. Typically, it earns a lower ranking because it’s often used for walking (very low-intensity and low fat/calorie-burning).
But I give it a higher ranking because it’s easy to take it from “low and slow” walking or jogging workouts to a max-intensity, ultra-effective workout with some minor adjustments. In this case, simply turning up the speed for sprint training.
Sprint training is a form of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) that involves periods of high-intensity sprinting (typically 30 to 45 seconds) followed by periods of low-intensity walking or jogging (typically 90 to 120 seconds).
Over a 20-minute sprint training workout, you can burn upwards of 1,000 calories.
Yes, read that again: more than ONE THOUSAND CALORIES!
During the periods of high-intensity sprinting, you’ll burn chiefly glycogen-based energy, but you’ll end up burning lipid-based energy during the low-intensity periods and in the hours following the workout.
Trainer’s Note:
HIIT training is the only form of cardio that increases your post-workout metabolism on par with resistance training, leading to hours of additional calorie-burning even after you finish training.
If you use the treadmill just for a light jog or walk, you won’t get the max benefits out of it. But the fact that you can ramp up the speed to a full sprint ensures you get a truly kickass workout session guaranteed to leave you sweating and drained in just 15-25 minutes.
Our Rating: 9/10 (if used for HIIT)
Cardio Machine #3: Jacob’s Ladder.
The Jacob’s Ladder isn’t one of the most popular cardio machines around, but that’s largely because not all gyms have them. However, if your gym has one, you’ll definitely want to use it!
The Jacob’s Ladder is, essentially, an endless ladder. It’s a simple machine—just keep climbing, one hand and foot at a time—but the workout is far more difficult than you realize. In fact, it’s one of the most physically demanding of the cardio machines you can use.
The reason for this is that the Jacob’s Ladder places all of your weight onto one leg as you climb, using all of the muscles in your lower body to propel yourself up the never-ending ladder. For people with large feet (like me), a lot of that strain goes right onto your calf muscles because you have to step only on your forefoot.
Even if you maintain a slow climb, you’ll find that you’re breathing hard and dripping sweat in just 10-15 minutes. For most people, a 20-30 minute workout at moderate pace is incredibly difficult and exhausting. All you have to do to make the workout harder is speed up your pace.
Trust me, give it a try, and you’ll walk away with a whole new respect for anyone who climbs ladders for a living!
Our Rating: 8/10.
Cardio Machine #4: Assault Bike.
The assault bike is a wonderful piece of equipment!
These bikes—for example, the Rogue echo bike you’ll find at so many gyms—feature an flywheel that spins faster as you pedal and pump the provided handles (using your hands).
Unlike the standard stationary bike, you’re mixing both upper and lower body exercise, getting your core engaged as both halves of your body work. Ultimately, you end up with an exponentially more effective—and versatile—workout because of the way the assault bike is designed.
The great thing about assault bikes: the faster you pedal, the harder it gets.
The variable resistance increases as the flywheel spins faster, meaning all you have to do to up the intensity and muscle-building effect is just move faster.
While the assault bike (which goes by air bike, fan bike, as well) is one of the best machines for HIIT sessions, it still gets high marks for overall weight loss and the slow-and-steady cardio workouts for maximum fat burning.
You can burn an average of 300 calories in just 20 minutes at a moderate speed, and increasing your pace will help you to torch some serious fat!
Our Rating: 8/10.
Cardio Machine #5: Stair Climber.
Climbing stairs isn’t quite as difficult as climbing a ladder, but it still makes for a great workout!
The stair climber machine still forces your leg muscles to lift your entire body weight with each step upward, which helps to build a lot of power in your lower body.
( Trainer’s Note: Typically, stair climber workouts are more quad- and calf-focused, though it’s easy to adapt to a more glute-focused session if so desired.)
Like all the other cardio machines, you can increase the intensity and difficulty of your training session by simply speeding up the rate of your climb. It’s not quite as efficient as stair-running (in stadiums or highrises), but you can still put in some serious effort hauling yourself up as many staircases as you want.
You can burn around 200 to 300 calories in a 30-minute workout if you push the pace a bit faster, and you’ll develop excellent lower body power.
Our Rating: 7/10.
Cardio Machine #6: Spin Bike.
Finally, we’ve got the spin bike. It’s designed much like any other exercise bike, but with one exception: it’s used for spinning classes, which are far more varied (and challenging) than just a steady-state cycling session.
With spinning classes, you’ve got an instructor controlling the pace and terrain, so you end up tackling some pretty intense challenges (steep inclines, high speeds, pedaling standing up, etc.) that take your workout to the next level of fat-burning.
Though it’s not the most effective piece of exercise equipment, spinning bikes used in a spin class can be a great way to take your overall fitness up a notch through a high-intensity training session.
Our Rating: 7/10.
FAQs About Cardio Machines for Weight Loss.
How do cardio machines help you lose weight?
It all comes down to the way your body utilizes the energy it has available…
You have two primary energy sources: glycogen and stored lipids.
Glycogen is produced from sugar and protein, and it is typically easy to burn. Your body stores around 380-480 calories’ worth of glycogen in your liver and bloodstream, which can be utilized easily and instantly as soon as you start exercising.
Lipids, however, tend to be stored more as inert fat cells (often around your midsection) as a preventative measure against starvation. While there are some lipids floating around in your bloodstream (in the form of triglycerides and cholesterol), the majority are stored.
To utilize them (as energy), your body has to transform them into a burnable form through a process called lipolysis, which is triggered by exercise (or fasting, but that’s a story for another day).
Now, when you do high-intensity exercise or exercise that demands a lot of energy to be utilized at once (such as when lifting a very heavy weight), your body burns through the easily available glycogen.
Only once it starts running out of glycogen does it turn to the lipid-based energy that is slower to mobilize and harder to burn.
Typically, you’ll burn ONLY glycogen during the first 10 minutes of your exercise, and only then with sustained energy output will your body start working to mobilize fat. This means that it takes even longer to get to the stored fats!
However, once the stored fats are mobilized, they’re available to burn in much larger quantities than glycogen. Every pound of fat has 3,500 calories worth of energy. The more you mobilize and burn, the more fat weight you lose. Pretty simple, right?
The great thing about cardio machines is that they encourage you to exercise for longer .
Rather than being a high-intensity or high-energy-demanding workout, they’re “low and slow”—slower speed, lower intensity, and thus lower energy-demanding.
Over the duration of your cardio workout—anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes—you can burn a lot of lipids (fat) in addition to glycogen because the slower pace and prolonged exercise duration gives your body time to mobilize fat and absorb enough oxygen (through your breathing) to burn those lipids.
Thus, you end up burning a lot more fat over the course of your workout than you would doing higher-intensity, more glycogen-demanding resistance training.
Trainer’s Note :
One thing to know is that cardio burns most of its energy during the workout, with only minimal energy burn afterward. Resistance training, on the other hand, burns a lot more energy once the workout is done, and much of the energy utilized is fat-based.
It’s for this reason that resistance training is ultimately more effective for long-term fat loss than cardio. Also, research suggests that a combination of both resistance training and cardio is fastest for weight loss 1 .
Which cardio machine is the best for burning belly fat?
The machine that burns the most energy is the one that is best for burning belly fat. Remember, you can’t “spot burn” (burn fat in a specific body part), but you burn body fat overall.
The treadmill, when used for HIIT training, will be the most effective cardio machine for burning belly fat. However, the rowing machine comes in a close second, because you’re constantly contracting your abdominal muscles as you move through the rowing motion. More muscle contractions = more energy burned from the nearest available source, i.e. your belly fat.
How often can you use a cardio machine for weight loss for fast results?
There are two ways you can approach cardio workouts:
Utilizing them as a “finisher” to burn more fat after you’ve already burned through most of your glycogen-based energy when resistance training. This means doing a 20 to 30-minute cardio workout after your regular weightlifting. Using them as an “extra” to target your cardiovascular fitness specifically. Typically, you’d use the cardio machines either on your day off from weight training, or you take an entire week off to give your muscles a break and focus on cardiovascular endurance.
Both offer excellent approaches to using cardio machines for weight loss, and keeps them in their rightful place as useful additions to the fat-burning effects of resistance training.
What is the best program to use on a cardio machine?
Steady-state, low-intensity cardio enables you to burn more fat over a longer period of time, while high intensity interval training burns more glycogen initially over a shorter period of time, but increases your metabolism to continue the fat-burning for hours after training.
Ultimately, HIIT ends up burning more fat than a much longer low-intensity workout.
The Bottom Line.
If you want to get fit and lose weight, cardio absolutely deserves a place in your workout.
While your priority should be resistance training—because that’s what burns the most calories and turns fat into muscle—working in cardio sessions around your weightlifting is crucial for taking your fitness to the next level.
Thanks to the list above, you can make the most of your cardio sessions and get the best bang for your buck with every workout!
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What burns fat - What cardio machine burns the most belly fat
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