Simple changes you can make to your exercise program to burn more fat.

Sometimes you eat right and exercise regularly but results slow down or you hit the dreaded plateau.

One or two tweaks can often be enough to get the ball rollin’ again.

Within this article you’ll likely find at least 1 or 2 ideas that you can implement right away.

I’m going to assume a few things before we proceed…

1. You’re exercising consistently. You can’t exercise 5 days one week, then follow that up with 3 days the next week. Consistency is the name of the game.

2. You’re already doing cardio and weight training. If not, you need to because they both help you burn fat in different ways.

3. You’re eating 4 to 6 times a day and you’re eating the right types of foods.

Now, here are some ideas to tweak your exercise program…

Make small changes in your routine

If you've had the same routine for awhile, your body may have gotten used to it.

Have you fallen in love with the stairmaster? Try an elliptical or a treadmill sometimes.

Do you rotate the same set of weight training exercises? Try some new ones.

Sometimes a very small change can make a big difference.

Exercise in the morning

Two of the reasons that are given from those in favor of early morning exercise are…

1. You burn more fat in the morning because your carbohydrate “stores” are depleted after the overnight fast.

2. Your metabolism can stay elevated for hours afterwards. This is something you lose with evening exercise because your metabolism drops when you go to sleep.

There are some conflicting views on this, but give it a try if you haven’t before.

Add an extra day or two

Some people can get results exercising only 3 or 4 days a week. Others may need to do 6 days.

If your body has gotten stubborn with burning body fat, adding an extra day or two may force it to let go.

Hire a trainer

A good trainer can help you uncover "holes" in your eating and exercise habits.

He or she can also take your workouts to a higher level by pushing you past your comfort zone.

Here are 10 reasons to hire a trainer and here are some tips for choosing one.

Increase your cardio

Some people can get by on 30 minutes of cardio 3 days a week. Others get much better results doing 45 to 60 minutes 5 or 6 days a week.

Try increasing the frequency, duration or both.

If you normally do 30 minutes, bump it up to 45.

Try 6 days of cardio if you’re currently doing less.

If you already think you’re doing plenty of cardio…

Decrease your cardio

If you normally do long, moderate intensity cardio sessions, decrease the time but pick up the intensity. Or you could…

Try interval training

Interval training is a great fat burning plateau buster, but you have to be willing to push past your comfort zone.

Interval training is simply alternating bursts of high intensity with moderate intensity.

For example, if you normally ride the stairmaster at level 5, you would do…

- 3 to 5 minute warm up
- 90 seconds at level 5
- 30 seconds at level 10
- 90 seconds at level 5
- 30 seconds at level 10

You just repeat the cycle until your workout time is up.

There are an unlimited number of ways to customize an interval workout. Interval workouts can be as little as 12 minutes and up to 30 minutes or longer.

The shorter the workout, the more intense it needs to be.

Get off the machines

Free weights place more demand on your muscles than machines do.

This means you build fat burning muscle quicker and you burn more calories during your workouts.

Take a stand

Every chance you get, do your weight training exercises while standing versus sitting.

Standing causes your core, lower back and leg muscles to engage. More muscles used means more calories expended.

Try high rep compound exercises

I’m going to assume here that compound movements already make up the majority of your exercises. If not, they should.

Try doing 4 to 5 sets of 15 to 25 (or more) reps of compound leg exercises like squats and lunges. Don’t rest too long between sets – 90 seconds max.

The high rep ranges will have your heart thumping and sweat pouring.

Do some plyometrics

They’re not for beginners, but plyometrics are fun, intense and burn lots of calories.

Athletes do lots of plyometrics, but the average exerciser can do them too and great results.

Hire a skilled pro or buy a book or dvd before doing plyometrics on your own.

Try circuit training

Circuit training can burn up lots of calories during the workout and for hours afterward. Here's a good article about circuit training.

Conclusion

There are enough ways to change an exercise routine to create a whole separate huge website.

Hopefully you found at least one idea here that you can use to bust through a plateau and burn more body fat.

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