There are two culprits that people think help to lose weight when in reality it can add the pounds on. The belief of nutritional labels and exercise machines can actually hurt your progress.

Now before your think I’m crazy hear me out.

They have their place. Nutritional labels are important information about vitamins and minerals and exercise machines are certainly better then being couch potatoes. It’s the myth of what nutritional labels and exercise machines lead people to believe about how they burn fat that creates the problem. Labels and machines mainly focus on the number of calories. This kind of thinking can make it more difficult to control your weight.

Digesting food burns calories and every exercise burns calories but not all foods and exercises are created equal. For example when you eat protein, your body burns 25 calories for every 100 calories you consume. When eating carbohydrates and fats your body burns 10 to 15 calories for every 100 calories your consume. For this reason your want to increase lean protein with each meal. This will help your burn more calories.

Let’s talk about exercise. Most people think “aerobics” cardiovascular workouts is the fastest way to burn fat. Jogging, swimming and long steady paced endurance exercises burns a lot of calories. YES it does burn more then weight training, yoga and pilates BUT IT STOPS. Listen to this…

A study showed when doing cardio exercises the calories burned effect lasted 30 to 60 minutes. Let’s look at weight training. The same study showed the calories burned lasted as long as 48 hours. 48 hours of burning additional fat. This is known as the after burn.

Weight training will burn more calories long after your workout. The research showed that both groups did see weight loss BUT the weight training group lost fat ONLY while the long steady cardio group lost BOTH FAT AND MUSCLE.

Don’t get me wrong. Cardio exercise is important. There are more effective fat burning exercises then log steady cardio workouts for burning fat.

Muscle burns fat. Each pound of muscle will burn 50 additional calories each day. Think of this, if you grew 6lbs of muscle you would be burning 300 extra calories each day just by doing nothing.

Your don’t have to live at the gym to get a 6 pack body. A short intense workout will prove to be very effective. If you make these changes in your nutrition and exercise you will be quipped with the tools your need to get the 6 pack body.