We all agree that belly fat is bad news and wearing too much weight around your waist is detrimental to your health. Here, in this article, I am going to discuss the best ways to burn belly fat using your recumbent bike as leverage.
How Do I Know I have Too Much Belly Fat?
If you have a waistline of over 101cm for men and 88cm for women, this will put you at risk for heart disease even if you’re not technically overweight and otherwise in good health.
Unfortunately, belly fat has also been linked to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and diabetes.
If you already own a recumbent bike, the good news is that you have a great tool for shedding that belly fat that has crept up on you over the years.
Best Ways To Burn Belly Fat
The best ways to burn belly fat fast are to perform a variety of workouts that build up your fat-burning engine, rev up your metabolism and the production of fat-burning hormones, suppress your appetite, and help you burn more fat and calories all day long.
Believe it or not that innocent bike sitting in the corner can do that for you. Here is how:
Do Interval Training
Try doing interval training once or twice a week on your recumbent bike.
There is actually no need for more because studies have shown that high-intensity training will significantly reduce your abdominal fat, including that dangerous visceral fat, much better than low-intensity exercises.
There are many ways to do interval training and here is an example or two:
First, warm up for 10 to 15 minutes by pedelling at a moderate speed on your recumbent or you can take a walk around the block.
Now pick up your effort as much as you can for a minute, then go easy for a minute. Repeat this five times.
Another way to incorporate interval training is to start out with 30- to 60-second high-speed intervals after every four to five minutes of pedaling at your normal speed.
Each week, increase your high-speed interval by 15 to 30 seconds until you reach two minutes of fast pedaling for every four or so minutes at a moderate pace.
Doing this sort of interval traing, you can burn just about the same number of calories in 45 minutes with intervals as you can in one hour at a steady, moderate pace.
Read some more on interval training here.
Remember to cool down for two to three minutes afterwards.
The reason that interval training works so well is that your body unleashes the human growth hormone which helps to burn fat and maintain muscle after just 10 to 30 seconds of high intensity training. High intensity training also helps to curb your appetite so you are less likely to overeat.
Why Not Try Fasted Riding?
Another way to turn on your belly fat burning is to try doing two to three rides a week on an empty stomach.
The only thing you can put in your stomach is black tea or coffee if you must.
Make sure not to ride for more than two hours on an empty stomach.
Riding on an empty stomach is a tried and tested way to help your body burn more fat. The best time of the day to do this is before breakfast while your glycogen stores are low. In this way, your body will tap into your fat for fuel to carry on.
Don’t Overdo It!
Don’t be tempted to overdo it. Going hard at it all the time can stress your body and leave you chronically imflamed, which in turn can backfire and end up contributing to more belly fat storage.
Do the intensity thing only a couple of times a week and the rest of the week you can ride at a controlled and comfortable pace.
You will need to aim for about 80/20.
The 80/20 rule is also called polarised training. This is definitely worth a try if you want to burn off that unwanted belly fat, as well as get fitter.
Your goal should be to spend 80 percent of your riding time at low intensity and 20 percent of your riding time at moderate to hard intensity.
Hitting all these intensities will improve your abilities all over. You will be working your slow-twitch muscle fibres, as well as your fast twitch fibres. The pay off in the end is that you will be able to work harder at a high intensity which in turn stimulates more fat burning.
Even if ten minutes each day is all you can commite to your training regime, do it as the rewards over the long term are ten fold.
Cut The Calories
If finding the best ways to burn belly fat is your goal, you will also need to combine your recumbent bike sessions with a calorie-reduced diet. Doing this will help you get there faster.
Try cutting out between 250 and 500 calories from your diet each day to lose an extra 0.5 to 1 pound.
This is actually not that difficult if you learn to pass on things like creamy salad dressings, sweets, sodas and sweetened beverages.
Rather drink lots of water throughout the day and especially before and after your exercise session.
Please comment below if you have any other great ideas on the best ways to burn belly fat.