Health & Fitness THE best exercise to lose weight and burn fat fastest revealed by SCIENCE

The best way for you to lose weight fast will depend on your starting point, your end goal, and your lifestyle. In this article we lay out ten strategies that are applicable to everyone, whether you're a fitness novice looking to shed several stone, or you simply require motivation to keep going.

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How to lose belly fat

Generally speaking the best way to lose weight quickly, and maintain that weight loss, is to follow a steady, manageable plan. Don’t try to take on more than you can reasonably fit into one day, unless you’re willing to make the sacrifice. Most likely sleep or your social life.

The NHS recommends that you aim to lose no more than 2 lbs (1kg) per week; anymore than that and you risk burning out and giving up. With that in mind, here are ten strategies to get you losing weight quickly.

The short answer to the question of how to lose weight fast is to achieve a consistent calorie deficit. That is, burn more calories than you consume.

If you eat 2,500 calories a day – the recommended daily amount for a man, although of course this can vary wildly depending on your height, weight and frame – and burn 3,000, you are in a calorie deficit.

If, however, you burn 3,000 but have consumed 3,500, you’re not in a calorie deficit, even though you've almost certainly been working out a lot have burned that much energy.

What you need to do is ensure you’re eating the right food and doing the right exercise so that you’re sufficiently full and satisfied even when consuming fewer calories than you burn. Here's how...

As we alluded to above, a common pitfall that many people experience when trying to lose weight is that as they start exercising more, they feel like they need to eat more to keep their energy levels up and consequently fail to see results. Instead, we recommend adapting your diet to get the most out of your calories.

What are macros for weight loss: count macros, not calories to lose weight efficiently

Not all calories were created equalAs the saying goes, a calorie is not always a calorie, meaning that energy sourced from a broccoli will fuel your body differently than a calorie from a donut. You could go on a 1,000-calorie donut diet and lose weight, but you would also wreck your body in the process. However, sourcing calories from the right macros can help losing weight and keep it off on the long run.

All foods have different energy densities. Foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains have low energy density, which means you will get fuller faster when eating these than you would high energy density foods.

Nutritionist Jenna Hope explains: “Proteins and healthy fats promote more stable blood glucose levels, keeping you fuller across a time period and less likely to crave sugar or over eat,” and so these are the kinds of foods you should get the majority of your calories from.

Consuming the same amount of calories as you are now (or fewer if possible), but getting more nutritional value from them will help you feel fuller for longer and lose weight more quickly as a result.

Sometimes it’s a real struggle to reduce the calories you take in, or even just to track them. If you’re constantly on the move and don’t have the time to count calories, or you have the best intentions and are cooking fresh with ingredients that aren’t all labelled with their nutrition info broken down, then accurately tracking calories can be a nightmare.

To ensure you’re getting a good mix of nutrients, as well as all-important protein, you could try a food substitute such as Huel.

This is not marketed as a dietary aid, but it is highly nutritious, and makes calorie counting a lot easier. A word of caution though: Huel may replace meals from a nutritional standpoint, but slurping a cool, slightly slimy milkshake instead of getting your teeth into a warm, healthy paella isn’t for everyone.

Some people thrive on intermittent fasting, which means significantly cutting calories – or completely fasting – for a portion of the day or week, and then eating normally for the rest.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger 8-week muscle building workout plan is as brutal as you expect. If it bleeds, you can kill it…As intense and rewarding as the Mike Tyson bodyweight workout is – and that story has had nearly one million readers, so we know people like it – the Arnold Schwarzenegger full body workout is so intense, it makes Iron Mike's look like a Joe Wicks PE lesson. Eight weeks of extreme discomfort that might make you as toned and, well, massive as Arnie in his prime.

The most popular form of intermittent fasting is the 5:2 diet, where you eat normally for five days a week but then eating no more than 600 calories two days a week.

There’s also the 16:8 diet, which is a bit different. With this diet you can eat anything for 8 hours a day, but can only drink water during a 16 hour fast. The recommended time to eat is between 10am and 6pm, although this can be flexible depending on what time you’d prefer to start or end eating (as long as you stay within an eight hour window).

The benefits of intermittent fasting is that during the fast period the body will run out of carbohydrates to run on, and so start to take energy from the body’s fat stores, thus starting to burn that belly fat once and for all.

Drinking more water – especially before a meal – can help us to feel fuller, thereby helping us to stop eating sooner and consume fewer calories than we otherwise would have.

What's more, few of us consider what we drink when we total up our daily calorie count and so potentially hundreds of extra calories can sneak into our bodies. Replacing fruit juices, fizzy drinks and even tea and coffee with water means we can save up our calorie allowance for the good stuff: the food that fills us up.

Top tip: keep a reusable water bottle with you at all times and restrict what else you drink. This can feel like a hard habit to break at first, but is surprisingly easy to maintain once you have a zero calorie drink to hand 24/7.

Reducing the amount of alcohol we drink also comes with benefits. Most obviously, alcoholic drinks are often very  calorific, so drinking less alcohol means consuming fewer calories. Simple.

Secondly, drinking alcohol increases our appetite, so we’re more likely to eat more than usual – and more of the bad stuff – when we’ve been drinking. Cheesy chips, I’m looking at you.

Lastly, we all know how we feel after a night of heavy drinking. Ready for a session and the gym and a day eating fruit, veg and simple carbohydrates? We didn’t think so. Drinking alcohol not only means we take in more calories at the time, but can affect our ability to function well and make healthy choices the next day.

Now we’ve tackled diet and nutrition (calories in), it’s time to look at exercise (calories out).

Even if you're eating healthily and are reasonably active in your daily life, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to lose weight quickly without additional exercise, whether that's running, gym, crossfit, team sports, cycling or any of the other myriad activities available.

What's more, working out will make you look and feel better and in our view, once you start looking and feeling better, it gets a lot easier to find the will power needed to improve your diet.

When it comes to choosing what type of exercise you do, the most important thing is that it's something you enjoy and will stick to. Don't force yourself to run if chances are you'll be walking ten minutes in.

There are two main types of exercise: cardio training and weight – or resistance –training.

Both burn calories, the difference is that whilst cardio burns a lot of calories upfront, weight training continues to to burn calories post workout.

This is because weight training builds muscle, and muscle burns more than fat as you carry out day-to-day tasks. In short, the greater your muscle:fat ratio, the more calories you burn even when you are standing still.

Weight training may seem daunting, but you don’t have to join a gym and face up to the squat rack right away. There are so many weight exercises you can do at home with simple bits of equipment from dumbbells to kettlebells, and balls to ropes.

All of this aside, don’t neglect cardio, as cardio workouts are important for fitness and stamina, and will still burn calories.

It’s important to decide how you want to measure your success and keep track consistently, understanding that you will see daily fluctuations due to things like digestive contents and water retention.

Running watches are the easiest way to track your progress, remain motivated and keep weight off. Depending how fancy you go, you can track pretty much any metric that works for you, certainly way beyond whether you’ve achieved your 10,000 steps. Whether it’s weight, BMI, resting heart rate, calories burned or activity level, the best running watch will track it all.

Many wearables branded as fitness trackers also have a stab at these more advanced metrics nowadays, but we'd always recommend a watch over a band.

Another way to keep track of your progress is the old fashioned method of weighing yourself. The great thing about modern bathroom scales is they don't just tell you your weight; they also let you know your body fat percentage.

This is a much, much better metric to track than weight alone. If you're working out while dieting you can easily put on weight, even when running a calorie deficit, just because muscle is heavier than fat.

Now, although the calculations of body fat percentage scales produce are based on sound science, accuracy can vary. The key thing to note is that if the overall trend is going down, you're doing well.

We can't stress enough the importance of giving your body time to lose weight. You can lose weight faster by using the right gear and having the right knowledge and attitude, but you'll likely need to redefine what 'fast' means to you.