If you’re trying to lose weight, you will probably want to know which exercises give the most bang for your buck in terms of burning calories writes Jamie Johnston.

Well here’s a little secret – the best way to get rid of calories is not to eat them in the first place!

This may sound obvious, but the calories in one large glass of wine or a Mars bar are equivalent to 20 minutes running for the average person. It’s far easier to just eat a little less, than to burn off the excess.

However, there are some exercises that burn more calories per hour than others, but some are easier to do for longer.

You’ll burn three times more calories running at ten miles per hour than you will do walking, but most people can only run at this pace for 60 seconds, whereas they could walk for hours.

One other useful fact is that the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn both whilst exercising and at rest. Therefore, if you want to lose weight, it is important to gain a little more lean muscle.

The exercises which burn the most calories involve impact or use the whole body. Running and skipping are two of the simplest exercises, but are also relatively high-impact.

Cross-country skiing and rowing also burn calories because they use the whole body, but can be harder to do around the streets of the West Midlands!

Impact exercises do place a little extra stress on the joints, but the impact is also important in strengthening bones and reduces the risk of osteoporosis.

However the main factor in deciding what is best for you is not what burns the most calories per se, but what will you stick at?

You will only improve if you train regularly (three times per week for 30 minutes) so you must choose something you will do on a regular basis.

If you are more likely to go Salsa dancing than go running, then Salsa may actually burn more calories for you in the long run because you’ll actually do it regularly.

Burning calories is not all about steady-paced aerobic training. Aerobic exercise will generally burn more calories whilst you are actually training, however by the time you have got your breath back and stopped sweating, your metabolic rate will be almost back to normal.

Interval training

However certain activities give you an elevated metabolic rate after you finish, meaning you are burning more calories than normal for up to two hours afterwards.

Exercises that involve repetitions of very intense exercise followed by brief recoveries have been proven to raise calorie burning for sustained periods after exercise. The two most common ways of doing this are interval training or weight training.

Interval training can be done with pretty much any aerobic exercise. Interval training is repeating a period of intense exercise followed by a period of gentle exercise to recover. Taking swimming as an example, an interval session would involve swimming two lengths as fast as possible, resting for 60 seconds, then repeating.

Weight training

Weight training naturally involves periods of intense exertion (when actually lifting the weights) followed by lower exertion while recovering, before lifting more weights. This makes it like interval training.

It also has the significant benefit of increasing muscle mass so the person who weight trains will also benefit from a higher metabolic rate.

Many women have reservations about weight training and don’t want to become overly muscular. This is an understandable concern, but can be easily solved as to get big muscles you need heavy weights and testosterone.

Women don’t naturally have high levels of testosterone and if they can lift a weight fifteen times in a row or more it isn’t a heavy weight.

Therefore women concerned about getting too muscular should pick weights they can do at least fifteen repetitions with so they get muscular tone and endurance, rather than bulky muscle gain.

So in summary, the best way to burn calories and promote weight loss is:

• Try not to eat too many calories in the first place.
• Use a form of exercise that you enjoy and so are more likely to stick to and improve in.
• Try interval training to burn extra calories.
• Use light weight training to increase metabolic rate and accelerate calorie burning.

Jamie Johnston runs At Home Fitness, providing personal training across the West Midlands and Staffordshire. See www.athomefitness.co.uk for more details.