How long per day does one need to work out to burn fat?

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I've been working out, and starting from zero like I did, I'm having a difficult go of it. I can do maybe 8 minutes on the treadmill at 3 mph and no incline. I keep pushing myself, but am adding only a minute or two per session. So my question is, how long will I need to work out for per session to actually start to lose fat? I don't want to get discouraged, and my mom is in my corner and cheering me on (she needs to lose weight too but doesn't have my willpower).

The equation is calories eaten - calories burned. If this number is negative then you lose weight. To answer your question one would need to know your caloric intake and your resting metabolism. 8 minutes on a treadmill is likely fewer than 100 calories, or 1/3 of a Snicker's bar not consumed.

I found the stepmaster extremely effective in burning fat. It works large muscles and you end up consuming lots of calories (15-20 per minute) at high speeds.

Don't be discouraged. Keep at it every day and you'll be able to go longer and then faster, but it takes time. Once you get to the point where you can maintain a good elevated heart rate for at least 1.5 - 2 miles (20-30 minutes), try to make that your minimum goal each day. It may take you two or three months to get to that point. Every little bit helps, but complete inactivity will set you back in a hurry.

How to Burn Calories

Running Vs Walking: Calorie Burn

Congratulations on the work you are doing. It takes some time to build up your stamina, but it sounds like you've got the will power to do it. Exercise like you are doing, whether it burns fat or not, is extremely important to having energy and a sense of well being. You probably won't see a significant reduction of weight just from the treadmill, but the effects of the exercise you are doing should help a lot in your goal of reducing your weight.

I had been frustrated for some time because I could go on long bike rides (anywhere from 25 to 75 miles at a stretch) and I could not lose weight. Recently I looked up what an appropriate diet for a diabetic would be and was rather surprised at the smallness of the portions. As I was quite concerned that I may be running into serious health problems, I adopted the small portions. It turns out I didn't end up as hungry as I feared I would. But I ended up losing weight rather quickly. (about 2.5 to 3 lbs/week - this is actually a little faster than is safe and I have been working to slow my weight loss.)

When I did a rough calculation of the calories I was eating on this new diet it came out to something around 1000 calories per day. An adult male needs about 1800 to 2000 calories per day to maintain weight. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories. This calorie deficit roughly worked with the amount I was losing per week.

Going by my cycling computer from my last bike ride I covered a distance of 35.7 miles in 2hrs and 42 minutes and burned 1502 calories. I was surprised to discover that the amount I would have to increase my exercise in order to lose weight without changing my diet was more than I had time to do in any given week. But by reducing the calories I consume I am able to lose weight fairly quickly.

For a long time I kept thinking that if I just exercised more, I would lose weight. It turned out that I needed to both change my diet and keep exercising.

Some things that I believe are working for me at the moment:

1. I have increased the amount I exercise every day. I used to do maybe about 10 minutes on a ski machine along with sit-ups, a bit of weight lifting and some stretching. Now I do about 20 minutes on the ski machine along with the other exercise in the morning and 10 at night after dinner, sometimes followed by a 2 mile walk. (It took me a while to work up to this amount. Don't over do it at first, but keep increasing how much you do every day.)

2. I cook food for myself and I eat food I actually like. I am just careful not to eat too much of it. I think preparing the food myself helps a lot in that I can avoid a lot of processed foods that contain hidden fat or other things that I don't know about in them. A vegetarian diet, if done right, can be a great way to lose weight. You can cut out a lot of fat this way.

3. I take breaks from the diet or exercise. I will sometimes eat an extra portion of food if I really want it, (I wait 30 minutes before taking a second portion) but I limit this to maybe once a week or so. I will also allow myself one day per week where I don't exercise so as to recuperate and be able to exercise more the following week.

4. I regard this change in my diet as permanent. While the recipes might change and I may be freer to eat a little more (enough to maintain but not gain weight) once I've hit my target weight, I CANNOT go back to the way I was eating.

5. Recognize and accept the cold equations of Calories consumed vs. calories burned. It is unlikely you will be able to lose weight through exercise alone.

And remember that you may have different nutritional and dietary needs. The kind of exercise that works for me might not work for you. I really like the Nordic Track, but a stairmaster also sounds good. You have to find your own solutions. Losing weight takes hard work and it make take years to reach the weight you want.

I hope this helps.

I'm not a fitness expert, but I have lost quite a bit of weight recently via exercise and eating right so I'll share with you what I learned from my experience...

a) Workout on the treadmill 30 or preferably 45 minutes, once a day. If you can't do that much at 3mph, no incline yet,then lower the speed to something you can do for 45 minutes - or start out at 3 mph and after you can't do 3 mph any more, lower the speed for the rest of the 45 minutes. Using the treadmill gives you two beneifts - first you are burning calories directly from using the treadmill, so the longer you can do it for and the higher your effort level (speed / incline) the better, but b) going for 45 minutes at a pace that is as much as you can handle will get your heart rate going and will increase your metabolism quite a bit in the short term and will help you increase it a bit overall for the long term too if you keep exercising - this is important because it impacts how many calories your body burns when you're at rest for those next few hours after you treadmilled and even just when you are idle in general. So just do 45 minutes at whatever speed or combinations of speeds that you can but don't make it too easy for yourself. After you've done if for a few days gradually increase it. I do 45 minutes on the treadmill at 4 mph, slight incline every day.

b) As a trainer friend of mine told me, its 30% working out and 70% diet and nutrition. So be sure to eat right. I suggest lots of fruits and veggies, and lean meats (chicken, ground lean turkey etc.) - low or non fat cheese. Avoid foods with lots of sugars (candy, sweets), carbs (bread, pasta, flour, most other grains), starches (corn, potatoes, etc.) and pretty much anything you know to be high in fat (bacon, chips, etc.)

c) try to do some weight lifting or other exercises with weights to try and build up some muscle. Why? Because more muscle effectively increases your metabolism and the amount of calories you burn - your body has to burn more calories to sustain additional muscle if you can build it up. This will help you.

1. Leaving aside the health benefits of exercise, exercise is a relatively inefficient way to lose fat. Dieting/eating less is a much more efficient method:

Exercise does not burn enough calories to produce significant weight loss. The average person burns ~350 calories during a hard gym workout (exercise machines and personal trainers are being very generous when they give a higher number). A person needs to burn ~3500 calories in order to lose 1 lb. of fat. This means ~10 hours in the gym before losing a single pound, and that's assuming that caloric intake does not increase.

2. The belief that adding some muscle will greatly increase metabolic rate is also likely to be exagerrated:

"Most people know that muscle burns more calories than fat but, just how much more? Ever since I got certified more than eight years ago, I've been told that a pound of muscle burns anywhere from 30 to 50 calories per day. However, after doing some research, I've found that number isn't accurate. In fact, a pound of muscle only burns about 6 calories a day...a lot less than what many of us thought, but still more than a pound of fat, which burns only 2 calories in a day."

http://exercise.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1 ... s/cals.htm

Dieting is key. The trick is to put as much nutrition per calorie in your body as you possibly can. Gradually cut out all the rubbish in your diet. Eat healthy whole foods. Definitely avoid packaged and processed foods. My body seems to like lots of healthy fats, don't fall into the trap of thinking fat = bad.

if you went to the local public mall and walked all around it, every day without fail, the weight would eventually come off, presuming that you had not been eating more than you normally would have eaten.

I have been exercising several times a day-really incorporating exercise into your lifestyle is the way to lose weight.Walking all over the place,up stairs,across towns,while in Europe kept me very fit,along with the yoga and swimming I did. Here in the US,you drive everywhere,or in my case take buses.I do walk to the store and farmer's market,but I am not about to walk 25 miles to the university!
-Keep healthy snacks with you,so you won't be tempted by fast food (who would be though) such as walnuts,dried berries (make sure there is no sugar in them!),rice crackers,even one serving packets of peanut butter, individual cartons of soy milk
-Not so much dieting,but a healthy diet! lots of vegetables,fruit,and whole grains such as pumpernickel bread,which I have after exercising with avocado and hummus. Flax seed is a great mood booster,as well as fantastic for your digestion.Oatmeal is great for digestion too,just make sure sugar isn't added to it! it's also great for keeping your cholesterol down!
-Protein is very important! I haven't eaten meat in 12 years,fish in three,so I have soy and tofu and beans quite often.Quinoa is a good source of protein as well,it tastes delicious freshly cooked with some lemon juice and oregano on top!
-Don't totally deprive yourself of everything,moderation is key. Pick one delicious food or treat you love,and have it once a month! I made a rule to do this the next month,having it on the day of my birthday...in my case,it is a sugar free,wheat free, Brazilian nut cookie,made with rice flour and nuts and seeds..mmm! I have it with peanut butter on top and a glass of soy milk.However that's quite a lot of calories, and not so healthy,so that's why I am only going to indulge it in once a month instead of weekly!
Good luck!

I lost 58 pounds since January with a free iphone app called 'Lose It.' What I learned:

*be patient. You will go through periods where you seem to plateau, interspersed with periods of relatively rapid weight loss (rapid weight loss being 2 or more lbs per week).

*set long-term goals - don't expect to see major change after just a month or two.

*don't think of it as something temporary; think of it as changing your lifestyle, for the rest of your life. It isn't a diet where you can deny yourself of everyting and then go back to your old habits and expect not to see any consequences.

*As others have said, exercise helps, but controlling your diet is more important for weight loss. Exercise will do more to make you feel good on a day-to-day basis than dieting will, though.

*If you don't have a dog, you might consider borrowing a neighbor's. You can walk the dog a couple of times a day, and seeing how much the dog enjoys being walked can make the exercise seem like more fun. It's *way* more fun than using a treadmill, and knowing that the dog is expecting you makes you less likely to skip a session.

If the dog is yours,a lot of pre-packaged, pre-made meals are twice as big as they need to be for an average person; you can share the extra with the dog (and then you both go for a walk), and not feel like you're wasting it. Just remember that stuff that isn't good for you, also isn't good for the dog; also, they shouldn't eat grapes, onions, raisins, or chocolate. And you'll have to adjust his or her dogfood intake to make up for the increased calories from human food.

I've asked people but no one seems to really know the answer, there's a ton of inaccurate and misleading "information" on the Internet, and I don't believe any in any of the fad diets or medications out there that claim fabulous results. Does anyone out there really know how a 36-year old woman like myself can make her metabolism, which seems slower than molasses in winter? I can work out for a long time or go out walking for hours, I'm not usually a big eater but I just can't seem to lose any weight.

consider a consult with a bariatric physician. they specialize in the treatment of obesity. the reason some folk fail at weight loss is because, due to repeated cycles of extreme yo-yo dieting, their body's metabolism has been [unintentionally] trained to sustain itself at a very low level, meaning next to no calories are needed for basal metabolic function. some people make the grave mistake of starving themselves slim, IOW eating so little that the body sacrifices its lean muscle tissue in order to survive, the equivalent of burning a building down in order to keep warm. i remember reading about a woman who ended up this way- she could survive on just 400 calories a day, IOW her metabolism [and overall health] was wrecked. the climb up from that nadir is long and hard, requiring anaerobic conditioning to build back the lost lean muscle tissue, in order to raise the metabolism- and aerobic conditioning to better enable the anaerobic conditioning. oprah winfrey and richard simmons were in a similar situation for the same reasons. both found that unless they devoted 2+ hours of vigorous combined exercise every day without fail, the weight piled back on no matter how little they ate.
a bariatric physician can best arrange for the various therapies needed to correct low metabolism.

if your BMI is 2500, eat less than 2500 calories.

BMI is your basal metabolic rate, the rate at which you burn calories at rest - just living burns calories.

If you consume 1800 calories just sitting around watching TV, you'll lose weight. Not very quickly, but you'll lose. You'll lose muscle mass too.

Just make sure you don't have any metabolic issues.

BMI is Body Mass Index. It is found by looking at a height/weight table.
BMR is basic metabloic rate, which is how many kCal your body burns during a normal day without extra exercise.

the older i get, the harder it becomes to stay fit.