But how can that be… you may ask?  Your fitness watch says you burned 500 calories.  And that may be the case, but the question you need to be asking yourself is…

Where are those calories coming from?

If you think all calories you burn during your workout come from fat… you’re sadly mistaking.  In fact, contrary to what you may have thought, fat barely gets burned during a typical workout.

The ugly truth is when you workout the first and majority of calories you burn come from sugar.  Yep… sugar!  Technically it’s “glycogen” which is the stored form of sugar in your body.

You see, glycogen is the most readily available source of energy there is in your body… and that’s why it’s always the first to get used for fuel.  But, there’s also a limited supply of glycogen, which means it can get used up fairly quickly.  And when it does, your body turns to the second most available source of energy… protein.

Yes, protein… not fat.

Ok, so it’s protein… doesn’t sound all that bad right?  That is until you figure out that the largest source of protein comes from your muscles… which means your body literally eats away at your muscles for fuel.

Sounds a little dramatic?  Maybe… but have you seen the emaciated bodies of marathon runners and cyclists?  They have no muscles because their body consumes it for fuel!

And let’s not forget that muscle is metabolically active - a pound of lean muscle can burn up to 6 calories, mostly from fat!  So by losing your muscles, you’re essentially losing your body’s most efficient fat burner.  Not good.

Alright, so let’s recap what we know so far…

When you workout you burn calories, but those calories come from sugar first, in the form of glycogen and then protein from your muscles.  Now that you know… those calories you see on your fitness watch doesn’t have quite the same impact does it?

Ok, so what about fat?  When does fat come into play…?

Well unlike sugar, fat is actually quite stubborn to burn off.  Largely because the role of fat is to provide your body energy to function and survive at all costs…

You see, back in the caveman days, there were periods when they had little to no food for days… and during times of starvation, body fat was their only source of energy for survival.  Fat is what keep them alive… so the responsibility of fat has always been about making sure that your body survives.

So for the sake of survival, your body makes it difficult to tap into fat for fuel, unless it’s absolutely necessary.

The problem is we don’t live like cavemen anymore and fat doesn’t need to be used for survival… so the question is… how do we burn off excess belly fat for the sake of looking leaner and more fit, even though your body doesn’t see it as an absolute necessity?

The answer lies with 3 key principles which I’ll explained next… but first and foremost, you need to stop focusing on how many calories you burn in a workout and shift your focus on optimizing your hormones.  You see hormones are what controls how much fat your body stores and burns off.  So once you know how to control your hormones, you’ll be able to BURN OFF all of your stubborn body fat.

Researchers have been studying the effects of hormone on your body for years, and recently they discovered how to effectively re-stimulate lagging hormones that stop you from burning fat and dampen over-active hormones that cause you to gain fat.  It’s powerful stuff… and today I’m going to show you how to harness the power of your hormones.

The solution to regaining control of your hormones and achieving permanent fat loss lies with 3 key principles…

1. Exercise Less

When it comes to optimizing your hormones through exercise, less is more.

Research shows that doing short bursts of exercise boosts fat burning and muscle building hormones without any negative side effects like inflammation and production of bad hormones.  Low grade chronic inflammation, which cause you to gain fat… can be triggered by doing long and arduous exercises.  Even an hour of constant exercising at moderate to hard intensity can induce inflammation in your body.  And it’s even worse when it comes to bad hormones.  These nasty fat storing hormones are easily activated and can quickly negate all of your hard work.

That said, it’s important to keep in mind that less is only effective if you know what to do instead… which you’ll learn in just a minute.  BUT the most important concept to understand is that burning fat and getting lean is not dependent on time.  This is one situation where the “10,000 hour rule” does not apply.  Building a healthy and lean body isn’t like developing a skill… repetition is not your key to success.  Your body is an intricate and complex system that requires you to really understand how your body works, if you want to get fast effective results.