It's better to keep the intensity high and the duration short and quick. Intense bursts of repetitions for short periods of time, starting at one minute, are best. It is vital to rest for about five minutes between these bouts.

To use exercise to trigger fat-burning hormones, it is important to discuss the variables of exercise:

1) Intensity (the power behind the exercise) and difficulty
2) Frequency
3) Duration (total time of exercise)
4) Type
5) Rest (The goal is to use exercise strategically to maximize and keep your body in fat burning and minimize fat-making stress hormones.)

Today we will discuss 3 -5: Duration, Type, and Rest.

Duration

The actual duration of exercise is also key. If you are being intense and doing it for a long time, you will automatically nullify fat-burning hormones by again stressing the adrenals to pump out cortisol. It’s better to keep the intensity high and the duration short and quick. Intense bursts of repetitions for short periods of time, starting at one minute, are best. It is vital to rest for about five minutes between these bouts.

Types of Exercise

There are two main types of exercise with anaerobic:

1. Weight training or resistance training

2. Increased pulse rate

Since the key to stimulating fat-burning hormones is intensity, it is best to find the exercise that will give you the best intensity based on your capabilities. If your body doesn’t allow you to do hockey, you might want to stick with either doing weight training or using a resistance machine at the gym, where you could get good intense exercise.

Rest and Recovery

This is the most important variable, as the fat-burning hormones are using up fat during the rest between exercises and up to two days after exercise. Without resting, you get very little fat burning. With some people, an extra 30 minutes of sleep per night as well as reducing their exercise routine to twice or even once per week, with lots of rest in between, will cause them to start burning more fat.

Plateau

The body adapts to the stress of exercise within two to three weeks. It then takes another two weeks to stabilize these tiny body cell structures. This is why people tend to plateau when attempting to lose weight or when starting any exercise program. This is also why it is crucial to change your exercise routines, keeping them new. I recommend rotating their sequence every two to three weeks. That way your body will never get fully accustomed to the routine and your difficulty and intensity will remain high. This is the most important key to staying in fat burning and getting more out of your exercise. Examples of different types of exercise that can be switched would be biking, step aerobics, running, Curves routines, weight training, yoga, boxing routines, rollerblading, racquetball and swimming.

The exception is the Adrenal body type, for which you would want to keep the intensity lower and keep the stress of exercise also on the low side. If you have an Adrenal body type, you would focus on aerobic exercise until your adrenals are stronger, then graduate to higher intensity type exercise.

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