When you feel like you’re about to die while trying your best on a stationary bike, it can make you wonder if the time you’ve spent cycling is already long enough for you to burn fat. For those who are wanting to lose fat, knowing how long you should exercise to actually start melting fat can help motivate you.

Calorie burning calculators abound and they can easily tell you how many calories you can actually burn while doing a certain exercise. But they don’t really tell you how long it takes before you start burning fat. Here’s what you should know.

Burning Body Fat

You’ll find your body fat stored around your visceral organs, in between your muscles, and under your skin. Body fat is basically used as an energy reserve. This means that when you engage in physical activities, fat isn’t necessarily burned right away.

In general, when you need a quick energy source, your body uses carbohydrates as fuel. When you’re sprinting around the house because you’re dreadfully late for a breakfast meeting, your body is burning carbs to power you as you run.

However, when you’re using the treadmill and you keep jogging, your body will stop using carbs and instead start burning fat to give you energy. In short, for prolonged moderate-intensity workouts, fat becomes your primary energy source.

How soon your body switches from burning carbs to fat will depend on certain factors such as your fitness level and the kind of physical activity you’re doing. When you’re doing moderate-intensity aerobic exercises, for example, the switch can happen after 15-20 minutes.

If you want to burn fat sooner than that, you’ll need to create a caloric deficit first. This means that you need to burn more calories than you consumed or eating less than what you’re burning.

Your body is actually constantly burning calories because you need it as fuel for everything that you do, even just breathing while you’re sleeping. For instance, for your daily metabolic activity, you can burn up to 2,500 calories.

Now, if your daily diet consists of the same number of calories and you’re not doing any other physical activity that can help you burn more, then you won’t start burning fat. But if you eat less than 2,500 calories by going on a diet or cutting calories, then your body will start burning fat after you hit a caloric deficit.

If you work out, that will help you burn more calories and enable you to create a caloric deficit faster. Let’s say that you’ve eaten a total of 2,000 calories before hitting the gym, and you’ve burned 1,500 calories through your regular metabolic activities, then that means your body will start burning fat after you’ve burned 500 calories while exercising.

So, if you’re doing an exercise that only burns around 250 calories per hour, then your body will be switching to fat as your energy source after the second hour, which is when you would have burned those extra 500 calories.

In short, fat burning only starts to happen when you burn more calories than you consume. A daily deficit of 100 calories can help you lose about 0.2 pounds of fat in just a week’s time. If you burn an extra 1,000 calories daily through exercise, you can lose up to 2 pounds of fat in just a week.

Your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is what you burn while you’re at rest, can also help you determine just how much and for how long you should exercise. The BMR typically accounts for 60%-75% of the calories that you burn in a day.

Burning Fat More Efficiently

Turbocharging your metabolism is an excellent way to burn calories. When your metabolism is faster, you can burn more calories even while you’re just resting. One way to do this is by getting your heart to pump at 50%-80% of your maximum heart rate.

To find out what your maximum heart rate is, simply deduct your age from 220. This means that if you’re 30 years old, then your maximum heart rate is 190. Fifty percent of that is 95. When you exercise, try to get your heart rate up to 95 or higher.

According to studies, just 40 minutes of exercising in your target heart rate can already make your body metabolize faster for the next 19 hours. Knowing your target heart rate zone can guide you as you do interval training and help make your body become more efficient in burning calories.

How Long You Should Exercise

As you can imagine, how long you should spend time exercising will greatly depend on your BMR, the number of calories you eat, and what type of exercise you’re doing. As a general guide, exercising for 150-250 minutes per week can help you start losing weight.

Of course, the longer and more intense you exercise, the more calories you’ll be burning. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should just keep doing high-intensity exercises continuously. You should alternate between high-intensity and moderate-intensity workout routines instead.

You can consult calorie-burning calculators online to find out how many calories you can torch for every type of exercise you’re doing, and adjust the length of time you spend doing that exercise.

Great Fat-Burning Exercises

Aerobic exercises like walking, jogging, and running are excellent ways to burn excess calories. You can adjust your speed and the length of time you’re exercising in order to meet your calorie-burning target.

For instance, if you need to burn more, you can do brisk walking for at least 30 minutes. However, if you’ve cut down on calories and only need to burn a few extra calories, walking at a moderate pace should be enough. Just remember to work out longer when you’re doing any moderate-intensity exercise.

For faster and more intense fat burning, you can switch to full-body workout routines like burpees, jumping rope, or plyometric exercises. Box squat jumps and step-up jumps are actually really great for crushing calories. Plus, they can help you burn so much fat at lightning speeds.

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