In this world of 30-day abs, Instagram filters, and juice cleanses, there’s a ton of pressure to look a certain way — and to achieve that look as fast as possible — even if it means sacrificing your health and well-being. 

Knowing how to burn fat in a smart, sustainable way is quite the challenge. 

It’s not something we’re ever taught. There’s no “best way to burn fat” class at school. So we muddle through, trying our best but not really getting anywhere. 

We think it’s time to share some simple, trustworthy guidance on how to make your body burn fat safely and effectively so you can have the body you want and stay sane and healthy along the way. 

How to start your fat-burning journey

Start off by gathering some initial data. For baseline setting and progress tracking, we recommend:

• front, back, and side photographs 
• full body measurements

Ideally, take these once a month. That’s far enough apart to see changes in your body and close enough together to be able to redirect your efforts if things aren’t changing. 

Hold on, where are the scales? 

No scales needed! Scales track weight loss, and there’s a big difference between fat loss vs. weight loss.

Weight loss comes in different forms: you can lose water, glycogen, fat, or muscle. Weight also fluctuates often due to small day-to-day things like a salty meal or a change in hormone levels, making it a less reliable way to see meaningful changes in your body. 

Fat loss, on the other hand, is how we change our body shape and composition in a way that lasts. If you’re itching to see a leaner, more sculpted you in the mirror, it’s fat loss you’re after. 

So, set your future self up for success by tracking the right kind of progress. 

Fat burning basics

To lose body fat, you need to burn more calories than you eat. 

In other words, you need to create a caloric deficit, so your body uses its stored energy — which is stored in the form of fat — to fuel your activity. 

Within this, we can leverage:

• What we eat. Not just eating less but eating more of the right things.
• How we move. Not just moving more but moving enough and in the right ways. 
• How we rest. Rest, recovery, and sleep have awesome fat-burning potential. (Yes, really!) 

We’ll dig into all this a little later. 

How long does it take to burn fat?

The generally recognized advice is to aim to drop 0.5%–1% body fat per month, but bodies are not all the same, and they don’t really work in such a straightforward way. It’s also pretty tough (and unnecessary) to get an accurate grasp on your body fat percentage.

So, while we realize this is a frustrating answer, the truth is … it depends. 

It won’t be a dramatic, speedy, movie-worthy process, but if you:

• have patience
• are consistent with your actions
• stay connected to your goals 
• push yourself to progress regularly

you won’t be worrying about how long it takes to burn fat; you’ll be watching your body change in real time. 

The 10 best ways to burn fat

So, what is recommended for fat burning?

Presenting … 

… 10 science-backed ways to blitz body fat that are used by real people, just like you, every day.

1. Do cardio

Cardiovascular exercise like walking, running, cycling, and rowing can decrease body fat, belly fat, and waist circumference.[1–3]

It burns calories and can reduce hunger and cravings, making that all-important caloric deficit a whole lot easier to get.[4]

To get your cardio ball rolling, aim for: 

• 20–60 minutes
• 3–4 days a week
• a mixture of intensities:
  • low, like a gentle walk at an easy pace you could keep up for quite some time 
  • moderate, like a steady bike ride where you’re breathing harder than normal but can still talk reasonably easily
  • high, like challenging interval sprints, where you can’t say more than three to five words in a row while doing them

2. Strength train

The fastest way to burn fat? Have more muscle on your body.

Because muscle takes more energy to maintain than fat does, having more muscle increases your metabolic rate.[5]

That means you burn more calories at rest, which is precisely why strength training is such an epic fat-burning workout.[6] 

Even better, thanks to excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), your body continues burning calories at a higher rate than normal for some time after you’re done working out.

To harness the power of strength training, shoot for:

• 3–4 strength training sessions a week (start out with 1–2 if you’re new)
• a variety of movements for the whole body throughout the week
• 2–4 sets of 6–12 reps for most exercises

As you get more comfortable, increase weight, reps, and/or sets. Your body will build more muscle tissue to handle the extra workload and boom! More muscle in the tank!

3. Recover well

Recovery is a good friend to fat burning because it keeps you off the fast track to fatigue, burnout, and injury. When you want to use exercise to make fat surrender to your attempts to burn it, the aim of the game is to stay in the game.

To keep yourself firing on all cylinders and working your fat-blasting abilities, embrace active recovery-style activities, like easy walking and stretching, and take at least one day off training to rest — and rest hard — every week.

4. Get enough sleep

Speaking of resting hard, sleep is a potent fat burner. 

Good sleep keeps your hunger and fullness hormones in tip-top shape, helping you control your appetite and make better food choices.[7] It’s also a recovery powerhouse that directly supports your ability to crush your workouts. Bonus!

Poor sleep, by contrast, can reduce metabolism and increase cravings,[8] potentially increaseing your risk of obesity.[9]

We’re all unique in our sleep needs, but science suggests around seven hours or more a night is ideal as part of your “how to burn body fat” toolkit.[10]

Try creating an end-of-day winddown routine to ease you into dreamland so you can catch more z’s.

Plus, don’t sleep on our app, which is full of resources for improving sleep, managing stress, building better habits, and more. (Did we mention that it’s also a fasting buddy?) Get started today by taking our Simple quiz.

5. Eat enough protein

Lots of studies link eating quality protein with lower body fat, and with good reason.[11] A high protein diet helps to:

• increase feelings of fullness [12]
• decrease hunger [12]
• reduce cravings

all of which help when you’re trying to eat less than you burn. (There’s that calorie deficit again.)

Protein also increases your metabolic rate, helping you burn more calories through thermogenesis (the energy your body has to use to break protein down into a usable form), and both builds and preserves muscle.[13,14]

To burn fat fast at home, hop into the kitchen and start adding high-protein foods like chicken, fish, beans, and tofu to your meals. 

6. Eat better carbs

The idea that eating low or no carbs is The Hallowed Path to fat loss hangs around like a bad smell. 

And sure, a low-carb diet can be effective. But it’s not necessarily more effective compared to other diets.[15]

What really matters is the quality of your carbs. 

Eating refined carbs can lead to: 

• increased hunger and less satiety
• increased visceral fat [16]
• a larger waist circumference [17]

On the flip side, diets high in whole grains are linked with smaller waist circumferences, better appetite management, higher energy levels, and better recovery.[18] 

See what happens when you swap some pastries, white bread, and breakfast cereals for a little more quinoa, oats, beans, and lentils.

7. Eat more fiber

No “how do you burn fat?” article would be complete without this sage wisdom, known to parents the world over:

Eat your vegetables!

But your inner child wants to know, does it really help with fat loss? 

It sure does. 

Higher fiber intake has been linked to increased weight loss [19] and reduced belly fat,[20] and it works because fiber:

• keeps you full, so you don’t overeat
• keeps your blood sugar balanced, so cravings aren’t constantly knocking at your door
• gives you energy, so you can lift weights, play pickleball, and still have enough juice in the tank to chop some carrots for tomorrow

Choose a few veggies (and other high-fiber foods, like beans, lentils, and fruit) you enjoy and add an extra portion to your meals.

8. Eat healthy fats

Just like carbs, somewhere along the way, the mainstream got it twisted about fat. Let’s set the record straight: 

Eating fat helps you burn fat. 

Not just any old fats, mind you — the healthy kind. Quality, again, is key. 

We’d understand completely if you’re thinking, “Yeah right, simple. Just exactly how do I burn fat by eating fat??” so let’s check the science. 

The Mediterranean diet, which is rich in healthy fats like olive oil and nuts, often comes up with the goods for long-term weight loss compared with a low-fat diet.[21]

Replacing saturated and trans fats with unsaturated (especially polyunsaturated) fats contributes to the prevention of age-related weight gain.[22] 

Healthy fat helps to vanquish body fat because it:

• keeps you fuller for longer
• squashes cravings
• makes food taste better (important for diet stickability) 

We’re not suggesting you go wild. Fat is still the most calorific macronutrient, and the overall goal is still to eat less than you burn. Aim to keep your fat intake around 20% to 30% of your daily calories, but also aim to switch out the saturated and trans fats in your diet for the unsaturated kind. Try:

• exchanging coconut oil for olive oil
• swapping margarine for avocado in baking (seriously!)
• upgrading your nut butter

(Need a hand with all these nutrition steps? We can help you learn how to meal plan.)

9. Drink more water

One of the simplest fat burners on the block, drinking water, has a lot going for it. It can help you:

• eat less — especially so before a meal [23,24]
• feel fuller longer [25]
• feel less hungry [25]
• drink fewer drinks that stall fat loss, like soda [26]

All of which is undeniably helpful when you’re trying to create a caloric deficit. 

It can also increase your resting metabolic rate, so you burn more calories doing nothing (who doesn’t love increased calorie burn when you’re sleeping?).[27]

Try adding a glass of water to the start of your meal. 

10. Try intermittent fasting

At Simple, we’re big fans of intermittent fasting, which is an approach to nutrition that alternates periods of eating with periods of fasting. 

We’ve seen, up close and personal, intermittent fasting’s fat loss effects.[28] It can burn fat with the best of them.[29] 

There are lots of intermittent fasting options to choose from like:

• 12-hour intermittent fasting
• 14:10 intermittent fasting
• 16:8 intermittent fasting

These “time-restricted eating” schedules are our favorites at Simple. There are some more restrictive fasting schedules (like the Warrior Diet, alternate-day fasting, and the 5:2 diet), but we don’t recommend fasting schedules where you eat either nothing or a limited amount of calories for 18+ hours. They involve more potential risks and safety concerns, and there isn’t really evidence to suggest they’re more effective results-wise. 

If your healthcare team is on board with your decision to try intermittent fasting, we’re pretty good (if we do say so ourselves) at helping smooth out the wrinkles of intermittent fasting for beginners. 

If you’re curious, here’s an easy first step: Check out our Simple quiz.

Fat burning myths

You know as well as we do — there’s a lot of garbage advice out there on the internet. Let’s put some of those misleading fat loss myths to bed. 

The lower your calories, the better

It seems like it should be true, but cutting calories too low will actually stop you from being able to burn fat because it’ll:

• steal your energy, making it hard to exercise [30]
• spike your cravings, making it harder to make good food choices
• slow your metabolism, making you burn less calories overall [31,32]
• impair your recovery, making you less able to push during workouts

The cheat meal

The much-hyped “cheat meal” is a meal that’s full of foods that you “aren’t supposed” to eat on a fat loss plan. 

Here’s the thing: no meal should be a “cheat” meal, because no food is inherently “bad” or “good” — some are just less nutrient-dense and health-promoting than others. Plus, you shouldn’t feel guilty about indulging every now and then. Yes, some research suggests that these indulgences may make us less likely to stick to our plan and more likely to make unhelpful food choices,[33] but a true health-promoting eating routine is one that doesn’t make you miserable. 

Rather than seeing a meal as a “cheat,” our suggestion is to cut yourself some slack and give yourself permission to enjoy the occasional indulgence if you need it. You should also build your everyday regular meals around health-promoting foods you actually enjoy so they don’t feel like a forced effort that you have to “cheat” sometimes to maintain sanity.  

Eat a little and often

Back in the day, eating a little and often was thought to be the bomb for stoking your metabolism. 

But now, research shows that various meal frequencies can be effective.[34]

Fat loss can happen whether you eat once a day or six times a day. Whatever works for you!

Always exercise at low intensities

Here’s the idea:

1. Higher-intensity exercise uses more carbs for fuel. 
2. Lower-intensity exercise — i.e., exercising in the “fat-burning zone” — uses more fat for fuel. 
3. Therefore, lower intensity exercise is the “Best Fat Burning Exercise” because working out in the “fat-burning zone” must burn more fat. 

This argument misses the point that exercising at lower intensities burns less calories overall. 

Remember, our fundamental principle here is to burn more than you eat. We need to clock up a decent amount of movement to achieve that, and the best way to do so is a mixture of low, moderate, and high-intensity exercise. 

Always exercise at high intensities

Our brains love to find the quickest, most efficient way of doing things, and yes, high-intensity training does burn more calories in less time and is effective for fat loss.[35]

It’s also a great way to get injured and/or burned out — and a super-effective way to learn to dread workouts — if you do too much of it. (Even if you like working out, going full speed every time will eventually create some heavy resistance in your soul.)

Again, mix your intensities for the best results.

7 best fat burning tips

Oh yeah, we’ve got more! 

To add to our 10 best ways to burn fat (which are all pretty meaty!), here are some mini tricks and tips you can use to give your fat loss routine that little extra zhuzh. 

1. If you’re new to exercise, start out with low and moderate intensity 

You can definitely burn fat this way, and it really helps with liking exercise, which, if you want to burn more fat, is rather important. 

The more you enjoy exercise, the more frequently you’ll do it, and the more fat you’ll burn. 

So, start easy and let your friendship with exercise build. 

2. Use compound movements

A compound movement is one which uses more than one muscle. A squat, for instance, works your quads, glutes, and core. A pushup works your delts, pecs, triceps, and core. 

Doing compound movements means you’ll build more muscle and burn more calories per exercise. 

Try swapping out single-muscle moves like bicep curls and leg extensions for compound ones like pull-ups and lunges. 

3. Do more NEAT

NEAT — Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis — is the calories you burn doing every activity that isn’t exercise, and it contributes a significant amount to the calories you burn daily.

To burn fat faster, increase your NEAT. 

Try the classics like:

• taking the stairs 
• parking farther from the entrance 

and get creative:

• play with your hamster
• learn to juggle
• paint that fence you’ve been putting off for years

How can you move your body a little more each day? 

4. Try circuit training 

For the best fat-burning results, doing cardio and resistance training is where it’s at.[36]

For an easy win, try circuit training.

Moving from one exercise to the next without rest keeps your heart rate high, while the exercises themselves — usually a mix of pushups, squats, lunges, kettlebell swings, etc. — will work your muscular strength and endurance. 

5. Try green tea

You could supercharge your results via a Simple cup of green tea. 

Green tea is thought to make us more efficient at burning calories thanks to its caffeine and antioxidant content.[37]

Worth a try! Stick to the teabags, though, and skip the green tea supplements, which can be damaging to our kidneys. 

6. Caffeine with your cardio?

If you’re looking for a fast way to burn fat, caffeine could be your friend.[38] 

It stimulates your central nervous system, increases metabolism, and boosts the breakdown of fatty acids. It can also enhance fat burning during aerobic exercise.[39]

If you tolerate coffee well, see if it helps your fat loss efforts. 

7. Improve your nutrient partitioning

There’s no two ways about it: to get leaner, you need to take actions that burn fat consistently. 

But not just for the calorie deficit you’re seeking to create. 

Improving the quality of your nutrition and exercising regularly also makes you better at nutrient partitioning, where your body uses more of the food you eat to build muscle rather than storing fat. 

Consistency = more muscle and less fat. #Winning!