If you want to burn excess calories, the simplest way to go is to exercise more and more. However, you must be aware of a few things about calorie burning. Most people don’t possess this information and end up wasting their energy and efforts.

To burn calories is like anything else. There are no shortcuts or hacks to going about this. There is no such thing as a magic calorie burning drug which can speed up our metabolism and save us from physical exercise.

Exercise will help you burn calories in two different ways. First, it makes the muscles do more work. Second, it increases the size of your muscle tissue, which in turn raises your metabolic rate (i.e., the rate of burning calories while resting). The reason behind this is that muscle is more metabolically active than body fat.

The easiest and best way to burn calories, is to spend from 20-30 minutes every day, and take a brisk walk. What you may not know is that the effects of physical exercise follow up, which means that even after the physical exercise is over, your body will go on burning calories for up to 24 hours.

In general, there are two types of physical exercise: aerobic exercise and anaerobic exercise.

The word aerobic means “with oxygen”. Aerobic exercise is the kind of physical exercise in which oxygen is delivered to the muscles (via the lungs and blood supply) over an extended period. Aerobic activities such as walking, jogging, swimming, jumping rope, roller-blading, rowing and general sports like football and tennis are usually continued for a longer duration, rather than short bursts of effort. Apart from burning calories, aerobic exercises also strengthen the cardiovascular (heart) and respiratory (lungs) systems. For this, they are often referred to as “cardio” exercises.

The word anaerobic, on the other hand, means “without oxygen”. Anaerobic exercises are the kind of physical exercise that don’t rely on oxygen for fuel. The most obvious example of anaerobic exercise is lifting weight. Anaerobic workouts mostly involve short bursts of energy, fueled by non-oxygen sources such as adenosine triphosphate and glycogen stored in the muscles.

Now how do aerobic and anaerobic relate to each other in terms of burning calories? Well, its simple. For instant and short term (periods of up to 24 hours) calorie burning, you would go for aerobic exercises. To enhance overall metabolism rates, extend the metabolism period and increase metabolic effectiveness, you will go for anaerobic activities. All in all, and the best way to burn calories and maintain a healthy body state is to adopt both aerobic and anaerobic exercises.

With growing age, metabolism slows down. Consequently, one will have to put in more exercise and add regular strength training in order to work the thighs, abdomen, chest, and arm muscles. One can also increase his calorie burning rate by drinking green or black tea: both of which are rich in caffeine, stimulate muscle activity and enhance metabolism.