Fat Burning as Tom Eastham views it

How many of us want to be big and lean? When clients come to me who are already well built, train hard in the gym, but just can not seem to lose the last bit of fat around their bottom set of abs, my advice does not sit well with them. “You’ll have to lose some size if you want to get to your desired level of bodyfat”. For someone who has trained for years to get big, this is not good news....

However, I think whenever we try to pursue two goals at once, we tend to compromise results. This is usually because we have a limited resource: time. If our goal is to generate fat loss, then using a periodized training approach with a specific fat loss phase (e.g., four weeks, eight weeks, etc.) where we focus exclusively on fat loss will always yield better results in the long term than trying to juggle two goals at once. For someone who is training constantly for hypertrophy, they will need to change their training which may ultimately result in some loss of muscle mass.

A better example may be a powerlifter trying to drop a weight class or lean out. They will be better served by not powerlifting for a period of time. By focusing on getting lean and then going back to powerlifting training, he won't fall into the downward spiral of trying to maintain his lifts and get lean at the same time. A 16 week program that includes eight weeks of hardcore fat loss training, followed by eight weeks of powerlifting work, will likely yield better results than 16 weeks of trying to do both simultaneously.

Training phases aside, you cannot complete your fat loss goal without correct nutrition. There's pretty much nothing that can be done to out-train a rubbish diet. You quite simply have to create a caloric deficit while eating enough protein and essential fats.

There's no way around this. 

Correct nutrition really is that important. Several trainers have said that the only difference between training for muscle gain and training for fat loss is your diet. I think that's a massive oversimplification, but it does reinforce how important and effective correct nutrition is toward your ultimate goal. 

Activities that burn calories, maintain/promote muscle mass and elevate metabolism are the key components to a fat loss training program. The bulk of calories burned are determined by our resting metabolic rate (RMR). The amount of calories burned outside of our resting metabolism (through exercise, thermic effect of feeding, etc.) is a smaller contributor to overall calories burned per day. We can also accept that RMR is largely a function of how much muscle you have on your body... and how hard it works. Therefore, adding activities that promote or maintain muscle mass will make that muscle mass work harder and elevate the metabolic rate. This should be your number one training priority when developing fat loss programs. 

Studies have been carried out to back up this form of thinking: Kramer, Volek et al. Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 1320-1329, 1999. 
Overweight subjects were assigned to three groups: diet only, diet plus aerobics, diet plus aerobics plus weights. The diet group lost 14.6 pounds of fat in 12 weeks. The aerobic group lost only one more pound (15.6 pounds) than the diet group (training was three times a week starting at 30 minutes and progressing to 50 minutes over the 12 weeks). The weight training group lost 21.1 pounds of fat (44 percent and 35 percent more than diet and aerobic only groups respectively). Basically, the addition of aerobic training didn't result in any real world significant fat loss over dieting alone. Thirty-six sessions of up to 50 minutes is a lot of work for one additional pound of fat loss. However, the addition of resistance training greatly accelerated fat loss results.

To achieve the best results possible in your quest for fat loss this new year, include the following essentials:

• Cardio
• Correct Nutrition

and believe it or not weight training. Separate your training phases and put up with looking slightly smaller in your quest for the perfect set of abs.