I am still amazed at the number of people trying to lose the belly fat that has plagued them for years. With people spending several billion dollars in the weight loss industry every year you would have thought that this problem would have been solved.

The science is around to enable us to lose up to 5lbs a week in a healthy way. The truth is that i struggled to lose the belly fat for a number of years. I actually devoured every book on the subject hoping to learn the secret key - the magic formula that would turn my body into this fat burning furnace so i could be lean.

The first thing i found was a bunch of fad diets. Most of them really didn't work and a lot of them are just plain dangerous. Just before we get onto what really works, consider this - in what way would starving ourselves of nutrients ever be able to benefit our health and weight loss? I also found a ton of exercise routines that were just plain wrong.

No exercise is really bad, its just that when it comes to weight loss some exercises are canons, others are pea shooters.

Finally someone told me about interval training and what they told me, changed my life. Why? Simply because there is no other form of exercise comparable to interval training when it comes to shedding fat. In fact, unlike steady state cardio which causes your body to burn fat for thirty minutes, a single interval training session will have your body burning fat for up to forty hours and if that's not impressive, then I don't know what is.

If anyone reading this has doubts then just consider the results of a study which was conducted at Tremblay in 1994. Using two groups of volunteers, one group was put on a steady state cardio program while the second group was put on an interval training program. As you've more than likely already guessed, the results were overwhelming. Those on the interval training program had lost nine times as much subcutaneous fat compared to those who had been doing steady state cardio.

What impressed researchers even more, was the fact that the interval training had actually altered the participants' metabolisms in a permanent way. In other words, even after the study had been completed, their bodies remained more efficient at burning fat, you get to lose the belly fat without doing extra work.

If one considers that those initial studies took place back in 1994, it stands to reason that over the years; techniques have been refined, thus making interval training even more effective than it was back then.

Obviously, results will depend on the level of training you do as well as the intensity of your training. For beginners starting off with a twenty minute training session and doing this three times each week, they can expect to loose about 2lbs per week.

Proper interval training is known to be extremely intensive so if you're unfit, please ease into it slowly. After just a few weeks you'll be able to increase the level of intensity which of course means more rapid fat loss. Above all, whether you only need to shed one or two pounds or whether you need to half you size, interval training is the most effective way for you to lose the belly fat which has been haunting you for years.