Activate Your Natural Fat Burning Furnace - All The Power To Lose Weight You Already Have

Everyone has a natural fat burning furnace within themselves. Of course with all the all the weight loss pills and drinks you may not know it by now. Your body is designed to heal itself, repair itself, warm itself, cool it self down and shape itself up(with a little help from you of course). To shape itself up, "you" must be involved in this system. You are the single factor that will make or break the system.

Your natural fat burning furnace is your metabolism. This system is made up of many organs and many systems within your body to burn calories. This network of organs and systems within your body work to break down nutrients so that you your body can function. During this process your metabolism, working at the rate most beneficial to losing weight naturally, takes calories from within your body as well as what is eaten and burns them. This process takes body fat or "energy" from all over the body and throws it into the furnace so to speak.

This is a very natural process. This process of churning your metabolism can take place all day. Activating this process will require you to fuel this system all day to allow it to work on it own continuously. What kind of fuel does it need? The kind that will not put too much more fat into your system, and at the same time give your body enough energy to make it to the next meal. Remember we are trying to burn off as much as possible, so putting in excess fat would obviously be counter-productive. Salt as well plays a big part in keeping you fat because it retains water, holding it on your body, but more on that a little later.

Water is very important to perpetuate this process all day. When you urinate various materials are being driven out of your body. When your natural fat burning furnace is working as it should and you are drinking the right amount of water you will find your self "peeing" pretty often. Passing clear urine is also a good indicator that you are getting the amount of water that this process needs to function at an optimal level. When you consume excess salt this water is retained. To work around this problem you will have to do one of two things.

1) Eat less or next to no salt.

2) Drink a even greater amount of water to over flow your water retention.

Drinking even more water ensures that you will have enough to allow the process to flow smoothly, even if you happen to retain a little. Keep in mind that you can also replace some of the water with tea, green tea, or other predominantly water based drink that are artificially sweetened. No sodas, of course, and only diets sodas are okay, but you should try to kick the habit of drinking soda too much anyway if you have that problem.

Exercising should always be considered when choosing to adopt an "eating style" that promotes fast healthy weight loss, as it can only assist everything else you are doing. Even if it is just walking. Also know that when you sweat, your body releases salt and water, and this burns calories in the process which is a double-whammy! You will be astonished when you put together enough of the right pieces that allow your natural fat burning furnace to take place within you and go into overdrive.

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Your Fat Burning Zone And Why Its Bogus

Many aerobic zealots as I like to call them refer to the fat burning zone whenever someone brings up the point that slow, boring, cardio is not the best way to lose body fat. They go on and on about all these studies that show your fat burning zone is the ideal condition to lose weight. But, often times they do not understand how to read a proper study nor understand proper exercise physiology.

Basically, your fat burning zone is when your body primarily burns fat as fuel during exercise. This happens when your heart rate is working at 65% of its predicted max. To get this stat, take 220 and subtract it from your age. This is your age predicted maximum heart rate. From there, multiply that number by.65 and you get your ideal fat burning zone heart rate.

Now here is the interesting point. If you look at any exercise physiology text book, you will find that the entire process for your body to start burning fat as fuel during exercise can take up to 20 minutes and the better shape you are in, the faster this process can be. Now, another thing is the longer you perform steady state cardio, the less calories you are going to burn each time. Essentially, your body adapts to the demand that is placed on it. The only way to combat this is to run for a longer period of time or increase the intensity, but there is a ceiling on both of these factors.

So how can you side track all of this stuff, get better results in a shorter amount of time? Simple, its high intensity cardiovascular exercise. By performing cardio routines such as sprints, or intervals, you are revving up the body's metabolism and fat burning capacity. During this type of exercise, the primary fuel used is carbohydrates. However, once you cease exercise, your metabolism will be at an increased level for some time as compared to steady state cardio.

This means you will be burning more calories at rest as compared to steady state cardio which will burn only a few calories in comparison. This type of phenomenon is called elevated post oxygen consumption, or EPOC. EPOC is positively correlated with metabolism. When you perform high intensity exercise, you create an oxygen debt within your body. Therefore, you need to consume more oxygen. When this happens, metabolism increases. This all goes on so that the body can return to homeostasis.

All in all, high intensity exercise kicks butt when it comes to losing body fat as compared to your typical cardio junkie trying to get into his or her fat burning zone. It's just not worth it.

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