How to Reduce Fat with High-Intensity Sugar-Burning Workout

If you think about burning sugar instead of burning calories when you exercise, you’ll see why high-intensity interval training makes sense. The sugar stored in your muscles is burnt off during short bursts of exercise, which causes your body to melt down fat so it could replace glycogen.

So, what’s the secret to cracking this barrier? It’s to exercise enough, not overtrain. For 6 days a week, alternate between cardio interval workouts (10-30 minutes) and strengthening and body toning workouts (15-30 minutes). Let’s get into it a bit more.

What is sugar to our metabolism?

Sugar is a fast fuel. Unlike fat, which is burned slowly and efficiently, sugar is burned fast, leaving behind lactic acid which causes the soreness in your muscles after workout. These faster energy bursts require fast energy demands – burning sugar instead of fat. When the sugar gets burned, the body has nothing else left but to start burning the energy from the fat, mostly during a post-workout rest period.

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Anaerobic threshold (AT) and lactate threshold (LT)

It’s a good idea to test your AT and LT, because they are quite important as predictors of anaerobic performance. Muscles can burn sugars in two ways – through anaerobic work (without air) and aerobic work (with air). For instance, a HIIT cardio session can be considered as anaerobic work, while a long-intensity steady state cardio (LISS) can be classified as aerobic work. Testing AT and LT can tell you which type of work causes your body to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) – a quick energy burst you get in your muscles when you contract them. As opposed to LISS cardio, HIIT is a better way to produce changes in exercise capacity.

High-intense exercise promotes fat burning

Intense exercise, as it seems, causes chemical and structural alterations to the muscles’ DNA molecules, leading to the activation of the contraction-induced gene which reprograms muscles for strength. According to a 2012 study published in Cell Metabolism, an immediate change in DNA is produced when healthy and inactive people exercise briefly, but intensely. Some of the obvious benefits are fat burning promotion, as the body experiences an immediate genetic activation that increases the production of fat-burning proteins.

The key things to performing HIIT the right way

• Gradually ease in. Before you start adding intervals, you need to have a baseline level of aerobic fitness. The minimum level of cardio fitness can be achieved by doing cardio work for 20 minutes, 3 times per week for a month. You probably won’t be able to do a whole HIIT session right away, so just add 2-3 intervals of 30 seconds after your regular steady-state cardio workout. You’ll be able to perform longer intervals at a higher intensity as your stamina improves.
• Do exercises you enjoy. Don’t run if you hate running. The thing is that you probably won’t stick for long with a mode of training you don’t like. Instead, choose a HIIT program that fits your workout routine and that you can enjoy. Choose exercises in which you use the larger muscle group and get your heart rate up, and that make you able to accelerate and decelerate quickly.
• Mind your nutrition. You need to fuel up properly, because you can’t do a HIIT workout on an empty stomach if you want to see some results. Carbohydrates and proteins provide the amino acids needed for energy and rebuilding. If fat burning is your goal, you don’t need as many carbohydrates as you do for lifting weights. For a HIIT workout, about 10-20 grams can power you up. You can also add pre-workout and specific weight loss supplements that promote fat burning and can help you reach your fitness goals.
• Listen to your body. If you’re still fatigued from the previous workout, don’t push it, you can skip one session. If you don’t want to skip, then do a workout at a lower intensity, but don’t overdo it so you’ll be able to come back stronger next time. If you’re a beginner, start with one HIIT session per week and increase as your body adapts to stress and becomes more efficient.

During a light walk or a bike ride, your muscles use their slow-twitch fibers that first burn off the glycogen and glucose stored in your liver. After the stored sugar is gone, the body starts burning fat for energy. With a HIIT session, you’ll burn the stored sugar much faster, causing the body to burn fat in order to replace the missing glycogen.

Luke Douglas is a fitness and health blogger at Ripped.me and a great fan of the gym and a healthy diet. He follows the trends in fitness, gym and healthy life and loves to share his knowledge through useful and informative articles. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100015143056445
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