People going to the health club with the latest edition of National Enquirer in hand to read while they do cardio workouts is a common sight in gyms everywhere. But despite the popularity of reading while working out, the gym is not a lounge that moves.

When performing cardio you will witness many who are simply reading, flipping through pages as if they are not doing any work at all. Their legs are moving, but if it was that easy to get rid of fat, we could sit on the sofa and do the same thing.

In order to burn fat, people need to let go of the idea of a fat-burning zone and focus on the main thing: burning as many calories as you possibly can in the shortest amount of time.

In the past, people have said that you must be at 65 percent of your heart rate maximum in order to burn a high percentage of fat. It is very true that low intensity cardio does burn a higher percentage of fat than high intensity does.

The problem with this logic is that if this was the case, then when we do nothing at all, which is the lowest of low intensity of cardio, we should be burning off fat. But we all know someone who is sitting down watching television or always sitting at a desk in the office- and they are not losing weight.

That is because the low intensity cardio does not burn as many calories as high intensity cardio.

High intensity cardio is the way to go to get a new leaner look. High intensity means alternating between a pace you can only keep up for one minute and then coming back down to a lower intensity pace for two minutes and repeating this five or six times. This means that you can finish a cardio workout in as little as 15 minutes.

High intensity cardio burns calories when you are doing the actual workout and also keeps your metabolism elevated for up to 24 hours. You gain an extra 15 percent of calories burned even after you have stopped working out.

So keep your magazines at home. There is plenty of time to read them after you kiss your fat goodbye with a new high intensity cardio workout.