How many calories should you burn to lose weight?

If you rely on classic aerobic cardio for weight loss, you’ll probably spend 30 minutes on a machine trying to burn a set number of calories. But does that work? Does burning 500 calories a day make you lose 1 pound of fat a week?

Well, according to science, it should. But if it did, you probably wouldn’t still be reading this article.

I used to write a column on fat loss myths for Men’s Fitness magazine. Here’s a classic weight loss topic that I covered.

Myth: I need to burn 500 calories each workout to lose fat.

TRUE:

Possibly one of the worst inventions for fat loss was the calorie count monitor on treadmills, elliptical machines, and stair climbers.

Because of this, millions of men and women are now obsessed with the number of calories burned per session. You’ve probably even been one of those people, watching it build up very slowly during a slow cardio session. All the while knowing that you can finish off a 300-minute, 300-calorie treadmill session with a swipe of a Krispy Kreme hand.

Too many people are brainwashed into thinking that if they don’t burn 300-500 calories a session, they won’t lose fat. After all, that’s what you’ve been told over and over again in those fluffy fashion/fitness mags.

The problems with this approach to fat loss are numerous. First of all, it’s hard to say if calorie counters are accurate. A story on CBS news showed that cardio machines overestimate calorie burn by up to 20%.

So, relying on slow cardio for advanced fat loss is relatively useless and inefficient to say the least. It takes a long time to burn a lot of calories, and one study showed that men who only used cardio training to lose weight ended up with reduced resting metabolisms. You’re basically undoing the calorie burn by relying on cardio alone. On the other hand, the men in the same study who used strength training did not suffer from reduced metabolic rate.

So what is the solution to burn fat faster and more efficiently? The answer is to use strength and interval training to burn fewer calories in less time spent exercising, but with a more intense form of exercise.

Your body will burn more calories after exercise (when using intervals) than after slow cardio and your metabolism will stay high. Some experts refer to this as the afterburn effect. How do you do intervals? Well you could run for 30 seconds and rest for 90 seconds and repeat that for 6 sets, preferably using the bike or treadmill if you are experienced with it.

Within that short period of time, the intervals will cause your muscles to go crazy with activity (I call it metabolic turbulence). This incredible increase in metabolism causes a lot of calories to be burned after exercise to get your body back on track. The result is that you’ll end up burning more fat and more calories in the post-exercise period as your body tries to control things.

Now, there is a time when you would like to count calories, but that is when you are counting and determining how many calories you eat per day. Again, you can knock all the work out of a workout in less than a minute just by eating crap. Without some structure and discipline in your nutrition, there is nothing my programs can do to help you lose fat.

So exercise nutrition control and interval training. These are the two anti-calorie counting methods that will help you lose fat and slim down.