Now, did you know that using long slow steady-state cardio type activity such as walking, jogging or cycling for fat burning might be the biggest weight loss scam of all time? It is simply not intense enough to tone muscle tissue to raise the metabolism (the body's engine) to allow greater calorie burning.

When asked to picture a typical "fat loss" workout, you see yourself on the treadmill or walking or jogging outside for hours each week (and hating it). Any wonder many people give up so quickly, or don't even bother to start in the first place And did you know launching into a heavy program of cardio activity is the last place a beginner should start?

Because many beginners to fitness are often overweight and unprepared for exercise, excessive repetitive cardio only predisposes them to muscle and joint injuries which can knock someone right out of their fitness program before they even lose an ounce of fat.

Often when realizing that this type of madness isn't working for them people then add more cardio work into the program. But extra cardio will not help as doing hours and hours each week is a great way to get nowhere in your fat loss program. So stop worrying about heart rate zones for fat loss, forget about how many calories the machine says you have burned and say goodbye (and good riddance) to long, slow, boring mind numbing ineffective activities.

Another misconception about exercise is that doing endless high repetition sets of light weights will burn more fat than heavier resistance (weight) and lower repetitions. Often people will do this on areas like the abdominals in the hope this will reveal a six pack.

Well the fact is spot reducing doesn't work. It won't work for your abdominals, and it won't work for your arms or chest or anywhere else.

There are two very important reasons to include strength training exercise in a fat loss program, but it's not because high repetitions will burn off fat. Instead, lifting moderately heavy weights for a lower number of repetitions will help you gain muscle at the same time as you lose body fat, and it will also help you burn a lot more calories during training and after. This is where you will get 'real' results.

Replace the long slow activity with interval training. This is short bursts of all out activity alternated with longer slower periods to recover. An example of this is 10-15 seconds of sprinting then 30 seconds to one minute of walking repeated 8-12 times. Try this once or twice a week for effective fat loss exercise. You will be pleased with the results and also the less time that is needed to fit it in to your week.

The only way to get results with your exercise program is to have it set up properly. You need to learn the correct exercises and do them at the correct level of intensity (degree of difficulty). You also need to learn progression in all of the exercises along with duration and frequency of the exercises. That is what fitness professionals do, if you try to wing your exercise program without the required knowledge and experience you are very likely to be disappointed in your results (or rather lack of them).

Proper exercise does work but there is a fine line between what does work and what doesn't work. So stop wasting your precious time on ineffective stuff and discover the new ways and methods that will give you the results you are looking for.