To begin with, assuming that fat loss is one of your goals is a big assumption. Where it ranks in your overall goals is a question you might want to talk over with an experienced expert. What comes into play, then, when you decide what role fat loss should play among your exercise goals? The answers range from life-or-death to a modest measure of vanity.

When Fat Loss Makes the List

The high-stakes reasons for losing fat include four of the top killers and the leading causes of premature death in the U.S.: diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some forms of cancer. Considering that more than 40% of Americans qualify as obese – up from 30% in 2000 – the stakes for fat loss are not only high, but also exceptionally widespread.

At the other end of the spectrum of reasons to reduce fat is simply appearance. How many examples of “six-pack abs” are hidden under a layer of belly fat? The only way to find out is to burn the fat. Experience suggests that many men and women have terrific examples of hard-won abdominal muscles that nobody ever sees because of the layer of fat that blankets them. Less obvious is that muscle definition everywhere, including the arms and chest, is as much a process of reducing fat as it is of building muscle mass.

The 7 Samurai of Fat Loss

The famous film by Akira Kurosawa – inspiration for the American western, The Magnificent Seven – offers us a way for remembering the top seven answers for exercise to reduce fat. Walking, running or jogging, cycling, weight training, interval training, swimming, and Yoga head a list published by Healthline.

Running, walking, cycling, and swimming are no surprise, and their heart health benefits add greatly to the reasons for including one or all of them in your program. Walking for about an hour, just three times a week, reduced body fat by 1½% and waist circumference by more than an inch, in a 12-week study. So think of aerobic exercise as the base or background for more aggressive measures.

Weight training makes the list, because even a 150-pound person burns more than 100 calories every 30 minutes just doing the workout. And it’s the gift that keeps on giving, because the strength and muscle growth also raise your resting metabolic rate (RMR), so that you’re burning more calories even at rest.

Circuit training is a way to combine the benefits of aerobic and resistance exercise, and an equipment-free version of pacing simple exercises, called Tabata, is an option we find interesting, backed by research and results.

If fat loss is a goal of yours, you have choice of how to go about it. Just pick an exercise or two (or three or four, if you are really committed) from this list of the Magnificent Seven.