If you are trying to lose weight by only following a diet program that restricts calories, you tend to burn muscle protein first and slow down your metabolism. That is why physical exercise is necessary and beneficial to our health and weight loss program.

If you wish to speed up your weight loss through exercises, there are two types of exercise that are effective in burning unwanted fat and not lean body mass. Aerobics and resistance training are known to specifically burn body fat and increase metabolism.

These exercises also keep metabolism raised round the clock so you burn calories even while you sleep, change body composition by reducing fat and increasing muscle mass, improve body's ability to increase insulin and carbohydrate sensitivities and therefore not storing carbohydrate as fat.

Aerobic exercise involves regular, continuous,steady and rhythmic movement that is sustained for at least 20 minutes at the same pace. This type of exercise strengthens your heart and lung as well as your bones. When you do aerobics at moderate pace, your body prefers to burn fat which is already stored as body fat.

Fat-burning exercises are jogging, walking, cycling, swimming and aerobic classes. Anyone of these exercises are not difficult to do and to get motivated and avoid boredom, you can alternate these exercises.

When you walk, ensure that it is a steady nonstop brisk walking, at a pace that raises your heartbeat and makes you feel like you are exerting yourself. If you are new to jogging, start with brisk walking, then gradually add short stints of jogging, one minute of slow jogging and then back to walking for a few minutes.

The other effective exercise to burn fat and build muscle effectively is resistant or weight training. This training uses your muscle to push against gravity, and in the process of resisting it, you increase the strength, endurance and power to your muscles.

Therefore any exercises that make your muscles work are in fact resistant training. This includes activities such as climbing stairs, doing sit-ups etc. This type of exercise tones and firm your muscles and improves your shape and appearance. If you are working with weights, you might want to start with a low weight and gradually add more resistance by using heavier weights. This will train the muscle to work harder and grow stronger.

By building muscle, you create more metabolically active tissue, and muscles burn more energy even when at rest than does fat. The more muscle mass you build the more you will increase your metabolism.

Be sure to start any exercises with a warm-up and end with a cool-down. Warmups increase blood flow to your muscles and tendons and lubricate your joints and prepare them for the exercises. The cooldowns slow your heart rate gradually back to normal and give your body time to wind down. Cool-down means the slowed-down version of your main activity plus some serious stretching.

Once you have reached your weight loss goal, you may want to cut back slightly on your physical activity and maintain your weight loss through proper eating pattern.