4 Highly Effective Exercises to Supercharge Your Fat-Loss Journey

These calorie-torching exercises can melt your fat away

Exercise by itself doesn’t burn fat. What it does burn is energy, which can help you generate a calorie deficit — which is the only way to lose bodyweight.

So, exercise is a tool that can aid your fat loss journey. And with the right exercise selection, it can be a really powerful tool.

While exercises like walking, slow jogging, stretching, etc do burn calories, the amount is so insignificant that you’d need hours to burn off even a tiny burger.

On the other hand, there are exercises that turn you into a calorie-torching machine. The best part is that these also elevate your metabolism and through the EPOC effect, enable you to burn calories even after you’re done exercising.

I want to share 4 such exercises with you — adding just a few sessions of these into your workout program can drastically increase your fat loss.

Interval Sprinting

This is my favorite form of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and it’s easily one of the highest calorie-burning exercises to exist — just 15 minutes of it can burn more calories than an hour of jogging does!

The protocol is simple — all-out sprinting for 20 to 30 seconds followed by slow walking for 45 seconds to one minute. And repeating this over and over.

Just 2 to 3 ten-minute sessions of this per week can make a humongous difference. In my case, I lost fat by just adding these to my weekly workout routine and making no diet changes.

Since sprinting is high-impact and can get your heart levels racing, don’t jump into these right away. Start with alternative jogging and walking, then running, and finally sprinting.

Even then, start with short durations of sprinting and long durations of walking. Gradually reduce the walking part durations and increase the sprinting’s duration.

Also, with any form of HIIT, eat a carb-rich pre-workout meal and focus amply on rest and recovery.

Olympic Weightlifting

Inspired by a shredded guy at my college gym, I had tried Olympic weightlifting. And let me tell you — just a few weeks beat me into the best shape of my life.

Olympic weightlifting is composed of two brutal full-body movements — the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk.

Both recruit almost every single muscle in your body, will get your heart beating like a drum, and have you drenched in no time. Just have a look at Chinese Olympic weightlifters.

To give you perspective, let me break down the movement pattern of the Clean and Jerk — explosively deadlifting the weight to knee level, jerking it up, squatting down to catch it on your shoulders, front-squatting it up, holding it in the rack position, push-pressing it while squatting down again, and overhead squatting it up.

Yes, each weightlifting movement is a workout in itself. And you don’t even need to heave around a lot of weight to reap their benefits.

If you are a first-timer, just the empty Olympic barbell can have you puffing like a steam engine.

Since these movements are highly technical, I urge you to thoroughly learn and practice the form before notching the weights up.

Jump Rope

A friend of mine lost weight just jump roping. It makes sense when you see the ridiculous amount of calories this humble-looking movement burns — a whopping 15–20 calories per minute!

Just 15 minutes can burn 300 calories. Let that sink in — an hour of jogging or 2 hours of walking burn the same. Yes, go order a jump-rope right away.

This exercise is so beloved in the fitness community that it has a cult following of sorts. There are YouTube channels dedicated solely to jump roping.

An added benefit is the sheer slabs of muscles it can add to your calves — I am yet to meet an ardent jump roper without bulging calves. As someone with one of the worst calf genetics ever, this is the hugest motivator for me.

And the best part? You can jump rope pretty much anywhere. All you need is a skipping rope which you can carry in your pocket.

If you already jump rope, great, you can carry one of the best fat-burning exercises on the planet in your pocket. If you don’t, consider learning it — I’ll give you company.

Swimming

As a 12-year-old, I dreaded nothing more than my early-morning weekend swimming lessons. Lapping around in freezing cold water for hours isn’t really comfortable.

But it would leave me alert and brimming with energy. Also, despite all the junk food I used to eat back then, swimming helped me stay decently lean.

Swimming, especially sprint-swimming burns much more calories than most think — a 130-pound person freestyling for an hour can burn almost 600 calories!

Legendary swimmer Michael Phelps is an excellent example — he reportedly ate 10k calories a day during the Olympics.

That’s more than 5 times what the average man eats in a day!

But thanks to the thousands of calories burned during his long hours of swimming training, he maintained single-digit body fat levels.

The best part is that swimming as long as it’s not early in the morning and in a freezing pool is a rather fun way to torch calories —no heated gasping or mopping bucket loads of perspiration with a towel. This is thanks to the water constantly absorbing the heat and cooling your body.

So if you want to burn fat while having it feel like play — there’s no better way than sloshing around in a swimming pool.

Final Words

As the famous adage “You can’t out-train a bad diet.” goes, unless you train as Olympic athletes do, you just cannot negate the effects of excessive eating through exercise.

Sure, incorporating the exercises we discussed and other high-calorie burning ones, you can burn a significant number of calories, but it won’t be so much that you can stuff yourself with donuts and pizza.

You need to focus on your diet — no need to eat 100% clear, even 50–70% clean is enough. Center your meals around whole foods such as meat, milk, nuts, legumes, eggs, greens, vegetables, and fruits.

And make sure that the combination of your diet and exercise put you in a caloric deficit.

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