If you need to lose some fat, then you're going to want to do some cardio. Not only will it help you burn off the fat, it also helps keep one of your most

important muscles (your heart) in shape.

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Fortunately, you don't have to slog away on the elliptical or the treadmill for hours. In fact, you shouldn't do an excessive amount of steady-state cardio. For proof, just look at someone like Richard Simmons, who's the king of cardio. He lost a lot of weight. He's slim. But he's very shapeless. This is often referred to as a "skinny fat," where people may be smaller than they used to be, but their

body is still flabby. Sometimes this happens when people crash diet and/or do a lot cardio. Since the body is starving, it looks for easy mass and tissue that it can break down into fuel. As such, it holds onto some of its fat stores while

breaking down the muscle mass.

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Unless you like the soft and flabby Richard Simmons look, this is something you need to avoid. And that means you need to avoid doing two hour cardio

sessions day after day. Thank goodness, eh?

Instead, you'll be doing two types of cardio:

Steady state or variable intensity cardio sessions for 20 minutes to about 45 minutes, depending on your fitness level. This is the "regular" type of cardio,

where you walk, jog, ride a bike, swim, jump rope, use the elliptical, row... or do most anything else you enjoy.

High intensity interval training (HIIT). This is where you do cardio from about 12 minutes to 20 minutes. Since this is high intensity, it's a very exhausting type of cardio. Thus you don't want to do this daily, especially combined with weights, as it could lead to overtraining. Instead, you'll do it once or twice per week...

but only once you get into shape. Thus we won't go into the details of this method until later in the course.

For starters, you need to start some sort of cardio approximately three times per week for 20 minutes per session. As your fitness level improves, you can increase the duration, the intensity, and how many times you do cardio per

week.

A word of warning, however...

Even if you're in good shape now, you don't want to go gung-ho on the cardio. That's because there's a chance you could plateau. And if you plateau, you

won't have anywhere to go - meaning you won't be able to jack up the intensity or duration of your cardio to break the plateau. So start with three 20-minute

sessions per week - and jack it up only if you're not getting results or if you hit a plateau.

One final word of advice: Mix things up to keep it fresh, meaning you should change the type of cardio you do every couple weeks (or every session, if you prefer). Not only does this keep you interested in exercising, but it also keeps

your body from adapting to the exercise. .

For expert advice and to learn more about which workout mistakes to avoid click HERE or visit: http://www.thehealthandfitnesswebsite.com/

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