5 Keys to Effective Fat Loss
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I hate to say it but exercise alone will probably not get the majority of people to their weight loss/gain goals. Exercise is only a method and a pretty bad one at that. It only contributes about 20-30 % of energy expenditure. 
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) is just the energy required for digestion, and only contributes about 10%. Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) would be the baseline level of energy required to keep your organs operating and is best measured right before you wake up. The organs that use the most energy would be brain, liver, kidneys, and MUSCLE. Unfortunately muscle mass is only thing you can appreciably change, and thus should be a priority to increase in any program. However, keeping your brain active (reading, learning, language, music, art, movement, etc), can have considerable impacts on RMR as well. Your brain eats up glucose/sugar when its active like a gas guzzling SUV. Your training should not be mindless (think elliptical and watching tv) and should require concentration, focus, and learning should be taking place. This way we are activating brain centers as well as using muscle. This will have the biggest impact on caloric expenditure and increases in lean muscle mass. So onto the 5 Keys, which I stole from Alwyn Cosgrove, the mastermind of fat loss. They should read like a hierarchy and as you go further down, the less important they are.
1) Nutrition
So yes exercise is important, but it is your nutrition that plays probably about 70-80% to effective fat loss and is key number 1. Your body is pretty inefficient at burning calories during exercise. For example, from a time standpoint it takes about a split second to decide not to eat those 500 calories, but would take your body a couple hours of “cardio” to burn off that much. Time management/efficiency is key, do you really want to eat that bagel? How much you eat can also be a barometer to how high or low your metabolism is. This is called Energy Flux, which I got from John Berardi. For example, If you are Michael Phelps and eat about 18 THOUSAND calories during the Olympics then your metabolism is like a blast furnace. You take in a lot and burn a lot…a higher flux. If you eat 2 or 3 times a day and maybe take in 1200 calories your metabolism is like a fire with soaking wet wood on it. You take in very little, you burn very little…a low flux. Who do you think has a lower body fat percentage? mmm Michael Phelps. One trick is to sometimes (read: 1x/week) add in days where you eat more, which can temporary boost metabolism, and achieve a higher flux.
2) See Above – yes it’s that important. The formula is simple, but that does not mean it is easy. Energy in = Energy out, if energy in > energy out, then guess what? You will probably end up gaining weight. Simple ≠ easy! Was that too much math?
3) Doing exercises that maintain/increase muscle mass, increase metabolism, and burn calories
You must stress the muscle to get stronger otherwise your body will think its unneeded and get rid of it, which is exactly what we DO NOT want. Think heavy weights, low reps. think 4-6 reps. Your body adapts to whatever stress you place upon. If you lift heavy weights fairly often, you are sending a message to your body, “hey maybe I should hold on to this muscle if I’m going to be lifting these heavy objects.” These exercises require the whole body to work as one, thus incorporating the most muscle, and thus causing a big metabolic demand. Placing them in circuit type fashion helps burn the calories and get the heart rate up. Exercises like squats, deadlifts, push ups, dips, and rows. I would say not much more than 10 reps.
4) Doing exercises that increase metabolism and burn calories
These exercises would be conditioning type exercises that get your heart rate up and use some muscle. ex. burpees, sled push, sled drag, Kettlebell swings, jump rope, mountain climbers. These faster paced movements create what we like to call EPOC or Excess Post-Excercise Oxygen Consumption. Basically it means you burn calories longgg after you stop working out. These exercises are pretty typical of most trainers and are not fun. Putting them into circuits creates a bigger demand and is even less fun. BUT they work, and 5-10 min of them at the end of a workout is not so much to ask. Beats 60 minutes of torture some “aerobic” classes put you through.
5) Doing exercises that just burn calories
Most of these exercises fall under machine based exercises, cardio, and other aerobic type work. This is the steady state,aerobic, get your heart rate up for 45-60 minutes, and get a good sweat type workout. Once you stop the activity you stop burning calories. This is the type of work most gym goers actually do, and thus why they get terrible results. Does that mean, they shouldn’t be doing these types of exercises? NO, but it does mean they have to shift their focus onto other things. It is sad to see the treadmills and ellipticals lined up in commerical gyms while people run like hamsters bored to death, hoping to lose those 5 extra pounds. I cringe just thinking about it.
Putting it all together here is a video of a metabolic type circuit that would be like # 3 and 4, depending on how strong you are.