How to exercise and lose weight is one the most popular question thrown at all personal trainers and fitness consultants around the world. The reason behind this is that there is many people out there that exercise vigorously almost daily and get zero results! It may sound funny if you are not the one that is not getting results. You can just stand and laugh and make fun of that guy who tried so hard and yet get no results.

In reality, it is very depressing for that person because that individual pours in all his hopes, his dreams, time and money into his or her exercise program and only to find out that he is going no where. This article is to address this issue. By reading this article, you would now know what it takes to lose body fat and look good. If you can satisfy all the principle in this article, you are guaranteed to achieve you fitness goal. For those who started already, it is not to late to apply these principles now.

The principle that I want to talk to you is this, the F.I.T.T principle. If this principle is followed exactly, you definitely can exercise and lose weight. But if it is not followed, you are just wasting your time. You can get some results, but not significant.

F.I.T.T is the ultimate guideline for all exercise programs. This concept stands for frequency, intensity, type and time.

Frequency

We always give excuses when it comes to something painful. Exercising for example. We can give all sorts of excuses like work, traveling, studying and many others but the fact is, you have to ask yourself why are you reading this article is the first place? If you want to lose weight and it is really something you want, be prepared to invest 3 to 5 hours of exercise session per week. Yes, there is no way around it and your body will not be sympathetic to your excuses.

According to the American Council on Exercise, you need to exercise at least 3 times a week to get minimum results and 5 times a week to get optimum results. In order to lose 1 pound of body fat, you need to burn 3500 calories. Do you think you can achieve that with just 2 hours of exercising per week?

Intensity

There are people who go to the gym daily. It is like their second home. They will do cardio and weight training religiously but yet, they get no results. Why? They don't get results because their exercise intensity is not high enough to utilize the fat in the fat cells! This is especially important during your cardio session. You have to hit at least 75 percent of your maximum heart rate. You cannot get lean abs by just walking 5.0 km/h for 45 minutes!

Type

The type here means the type of training. In order to maximize your body fat loss, you need to combine weight training, cardio training and stretching. Weight training can help build muscle, which in return speeds up your metabolism. An additional 1-pound of pure muscle can burn extra 50 calories by doing nothing. The extra calories are there to keep the muscle alive. Cardio training will help by making the body to use the fat in the fat cells, thus burning body fat and preserving muscle!

Do not look down on stretching. With a better flexibility, you can run further and not only that, your muscle function better thus producing better results.

Time

Time here refers to the time you need to invest in your training per day. Regarding weight training, an intense weight training session should be around 45 minutes. We are talking about a rest period of 1 minute between sets. For the cardio sessions, in the beginning you should try to train for 30 minutes. When you are fitter, you need to build up to 45 minutes. In my experience, most people lose loads of body fat when they can run for 45 minutes at the heart rate of 80 per cent of max heart rate.

These principles of F.I.T.T are very important. These principles are not just simply developed. They are created by researches and observations. If you can follow these principles properly, you definitely can lose the body fat that you wanted in no time at all! Think about it, these principles are so easy to follow you just make exercising your priority. You have to really want it!