You can speed up your fat and weight loss by using exercise techniques that are more effective through shorter workouts with quality exercises. If your workout sessions are longer than 1 hour, rethink the way you are exercising. Strength workouts of 30-40 minutes and cardio workouts of 20 minutes will lean and tone your body, provided you use smart workouts.

With a good meal plan, it is possible to burn 10-15 inches and 10 pounds in two weeks. The great thing, is that most of that weight could be fat mass. You would be on your way to the lean and toned body you want and need.

How do you workout smarter to achieve a healthy, lean body? Try some of these proven fat loss workout techniques:

1. Shorten your weight training workouts to 30-40 minutes. Circuit weight training is perfect. Dumbbell exercises, barbell exercises, medicine ball exercises and bodyweight exercises will give you better and faster results than machine weight exercises. The fat will burn off your body as you build muscle.

2. Do non-machine cardio. Treadmills, ellipticals and bikes will provide you with pretty good cardio. Running on the ground, bodyweight exercises and jumping exercises will tone your body faster and better. A 20-minute interval cardio session will do the trick.

3. Do compound exercises more often because they work major muscle groups. Squats, lunges, step ups, bench press and medicine ball chops/throws are good examples. This allows you to work more muscles in less time.

4. Jump rope at least 10 minutes every day. You could also use a jump rope session for cardio. Jumping rope is one of the best ways to sculpt your total body.

5. Walk 20-30 minutes every day regardless of whether you workout.

6. Change up your workout routine every 2 weeks or so to keep your body from adapting to the same old workout.

7. Do your exercises in a standing position as much as possible. A "stand up" exercise will give you more strength and fat-burning benefits. For example, work your hip abductors standing up instead of sitting on that machine. Your core will also get more work when you do an exercise standing up.

Workout smarter, not just harder. If you do this, the fat and weight will melt off and stay off!

Mark Dilworth, BA, PES, CPT is a Certified Personal Trainer and former NCAA Division I athlete. Mark’s Fat Blaster Athletic Training System has been proven to give his clients the fit, sculpted and athletic-type bodies they want. Visit Mark’s sites:

My Fitness Hut http://myfitnesshut.blogspot.com
Her Fitness Hut http://herfitnesshut.com
Sports Fitness Hut http://sportsfitnesshut.blogspot.com