Well, both low and high intensity exercises will help you burn off body fat. The question is which is more effective and burn more body fat. What is your fat burning zone?
When scientists first reported that during intensive exercises, your body burn glycogen, which is a form of stored carbohydrates stored in your liver and muscles for energy and during low intensive exercises, your body burn body fat, everyone suddenly change their workout routines to perform low intensity exercises to burn body fat.
Does it work? Obviously it does not work because there are still so many fat people around although they are working out with low intensity exericies isn't it? Why is that so?
Well, the scientists were right when they said that our bodies burn more body fat during low intensity exercises like walking or a leisurely swim. But during a high intensity exercis e like running, our bodies burn a lot more calories. Even if some of the calories burnt are from glycogen, we will still burn many fat calories as well.
To add icing to the cake, when your store of glycogen is low, the carbs from your meal you eat later gets converted into glycogen to fill up the store and will not be converted to body fat when left unused for energy.
Furthermore, high intensity cardio exercises crank up your metabolism even after your workout is done. This means that you body will continue to burn body fat hours after you have left the gym. This effect is almost non existent in low intensity cardio or aerobic workout. Accumulatively, your body burns up many many more calories during and after high intensity cardio exercises than lower intensive ones.
You can inject high intensity exercises to your cardio workout by introducing some interval training. You can walk briskly for 5 minutes, then breaking into a jog for another 5 minutes. Then walking briskly again until you caught your breath and then sprint for a minute before walking again for another minute. From this point, alternate between a sprint and a walk, a minute each and do this for the next 15 minutes and you are done.
Do this for 5 days a week and before long, you will be steadily losing unwanted body fat and weight healthily and naturally.