3 New Workouts That Burn Fat Fast

You’ve long heard that abs are made in the kitchen. And while that adage is true, what you do in the gym counts, too.

“Exercise is way underrated when it comes to fat loss,” says BJ Gaddour, Men’s Health Fitness Director, C.S.C.S.

The key is to incorporate a variety of types of training, from cardio to strength training to metabolic conditioning, Gaddour says.

On the all-new episode of the Men’s Health Podcast, Gaddour reveals the latest, most effective fat-loss routines. And for a full 21-day fitness program created by Gaddour, try METASHRED from Men’s Health. One guy lost 25 pounds in just 6 weeks!

Is Cardio Necessary For Super-Low Body Fat?

You’ve probably heard a fitness guru declare, with biblical certainty, that “abs are made in the kitchen.”

It’s one of the more absurd clichés. The guys you see in Men’s Health, or in supplement ads, or posing down in a bodybuilding contest, built those bodies in the weight room, and then employed superhuman discipline to stay out of the kitchen while dieting down to photo-ready shape.

But there’s one more part of their program, and it involves something the average meathead doesn’t like to think about: cardio. We know anecdotally that bodybuilders do a lot of it. But is it absolutely necessary?

4 Ways to Burn More Fat

Strength training is the gift that keeps giving. You burn calories during your workout. You also burn them for hours afterwards. The harder you work, all else being equal, the more you should burn both during and after.

But there’s a catch: The most advanced lifters don’t get much of a post-workout metabolic boost, which scientists call EPOC, short for excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. A recent study at Florida State University recruited a group of experienced lifters and had them do two different workouts. (All the lifters did both workouts, with at least one week in between.) Both workouts included the same four exercises using fairly heavy weights—85 percent of their one-rep max. But one workout included twice as many sets as the other.