Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Cardio Workouts Are Maximized With An Empty Stomach

It is not recommended to drive on empty when you are talking about a car. It is dangerous to be driving with your fuel tank empty. When doing your cardio workout, however, this is exactly what you must do to ensure optimum benefits. When cardio exercises are done on an empty stomach, more weight is lost. Because cardio exercises are very efficient calorie burners, the body burns up carbohydrates during a workout and, in the absence of available carbo, burns fat. Your goal is to always get into that effective fat burning zone.

The best time to do your cardio workout is, therefore, in the morning before breakfast. The body is empty of available carbohydrates in the morning since it has been many hours after your last food intake. This is the longest unintentional fast that you can take advantage of. You only have to do your warm up exercises and soon after you launch into your basic cardio workout, your body will be pushed into burning up your stored fat.

Another advantage of performing your cardio exercises in the morning is that you will persist in benefiting from its fat burning effects all day. Even after the end of the session, the body metabolism that has been raised remains at a higher level. The cardio workout early in the morning invigorates physically and psychologically and makes you more active and energetic for the day. This improves the fat burning power of your body even more.

Of course, if working out upon waking up in the morning is not an option for you, you can still improve the efficiency of your cardio workout at any hour of the day by ensuring that you have not eaten for at least two to three hours before the session. Carbohydrates should be avoided or limited as much as possible. The situation is not the same as a completely empty stomach but it is definitely an improvement over a full stomach. You just have to keep in mind that you may have to do a longer session because in the first few minutes of the workout your body will just be burning the available carbohydrates you have eaten earlier in the day. A longer session will ensure that your body gets to your stored fat at some point.

Keep in mind that in putting your body through a cardio workout, it is best to drive on empty. This will burn more fat and get you faster to the target weight you want.

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Polar RS800CX Heart Rate Monitor Watch