Many athletes of all shapes and sizes want to know how they can make their bodies better at burning fat.
It’s a quality that’s particularly sought after in endurance sports because it can give a major advantage over long periods of exercise.
So what are some of the measures you can take to improve your metabolic efficiency?
Fasted Exercise
A key method used by elite athletes is to perform exercise in a fasted state.
Doing this means your body’s glycogen stores are lowered, so it has to burn fat instead.
By forcing it to do this consistently over a long period of time, you will improve your ability to tap into fat stores.
Many long-distance running coaches get their athletes to train like this.
British marathon coach Nick Anderson, for example, recommends that amateur runners perform at least one of their easy runs every week in a fasted state.
Training
Simply by exercising over many years, your body will learn to get better at burning fat, according to a 2015 study.
Researchers tested how well-trained runners burned fat against how a group of recreational runners did.
They found the first group burned three times as much fat while training at the same relative intensity as the recreational runners.
Eating A High-Fat Diet
By taking few of your daily calories from carbohydrates and eating higher quantities of fat, your body will burn the fat for fuel rather than the carbohydrate.
But you should still feel as though you have enough energy to train hard. The difference is the source from which your body will get the energy.
Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is an increasingly popular dieting method for those looking to lose weight. Fasting for around 16 hours of the day has been shown to lower insulin levels in the blood, which then promotes fat oxidation.
•Above Anything Else Ensure You Are In A Calorie Deficit*