Find Your Zone

5 days left until the Seattle Rock n Roll Marathon and Half Marathon!!!  We have at least 30 Seattle’s Best Boot Campers/Alum and or Kirchoff Fitness PT clients that are headed to the start line!!! (warms my heartJ) My 70 year old mom is hitting the pavement too!!! Go Sumiko!!!

Many of us start a fitness progam to ‘lose weight or drop body fat’ so when the fitness industry introduced the ‘fat burning zone’, a place where we could get on a treadmill and stay in the same zone without breaking a sweat AND watch our favorite TV show, we all jumped!  In contrast to training in the fat burning zone, some decide to make the commitment to train for an event/activity….like the Rock N Roll Marathon.  And although making a commitment to hard work will take us out of the ‘fat burning zone’ it keeps interest high, teaches self-motivation, encourages community, increases strength and endurance, and it sure doesn’t hurt the body fat goal either!

So for those who are interested in the best way to burn calories or drop body fat…..well here is the skinny.  (By the way- many of YOU ARE ALREADY DOING THIS!!!)  Check out this article from the IDEA fitness Journal!

FAT BURNING MYTHS AND FACTS

A popular myth is that there is a specific range of heart rates in which you must exercise to burn fat. Even many cardio machines display a “fat-burning zone” on their panels, encouraging people to exercise in a specific heart rate range. Have you ever wondered if you really have to exercise in a specific heart rate zone to lose fat? And what happens if you venture out of that zone? Jason R. Karp, PhD, a nationally recognized speaker, writer and exercise physiologist who coaches recreational runners to Olympic hopefuls through his company, RunCoachJason.com, sheds light on this issue.

Fuel Use During Exercise

You use both fat and carbohydrates for energy during exercise, with these two fuels providing that energy on a sliding scale. During exercise at a very low intensity (e.g., walking), fat accounts for most of the energy expenditure. As exercise intensity increases up to the lactate threshold (the exercise intensity that marks the transition between exercise that is almost purely aerobic and exercise that includes a significant anaerobic contribution; also considered the highest sustainable aerobic intensity), the contribution from fat decreases while the contribution from carbohydrates increases. When exercising just below the lactate threshold, you are using mostly carbohydrates. Once the intensity of exercise has risen above the lactate threshold, carbohydrates become the only fuel source.

If you exercise long enough (1.5–2 hours), your muscle carbohydrate (glycogen) content and blood glucose concentration become low. This metabolic state presents a threat to the muscles’ survival, since carbohydrates are muscles’ preferred fuel. When carbohydrates are not available, the muscles are forced to rely on fat as fuel.

Since more fat is used at low exercise intensities, people often assume that low-intensity exercise is best for burning fat, an idea that has given birth to the “fat-burning zone.” However, while only a small amount of fat is used when exercising just below the lactate threshold, the rate of caloric expenditure and the total number of calories expended are much greater than they are when exercising at a lower intensity, so the total amount of fat used is also greater.

The Bottom Line

For fat and weight loss, what matters most is the difference between the number of calories you expend and the number of calories you consume. Fat and weight loss is about burning lots of calories and cutting back on the number of calories consumed. For the purpose of losing weight, it matters little whether the calories burned during exercise come from fat or carbohydrates.

Sidebar: Workouts For Fat Loss

To maximize your fat loss, try these workouts. For assistance in designing effective, safe workouts, consult with a certified personal trainer.

Go Hard

A great way to perform high-intensity exercise and decrease your body fat percentage is through interval training, which breaks up the work with periods of rest. Not only does interval training allow you to improve your fitness quickly; it is also more effective than continuous exercise for burning lots of calories during exercise and increasing your postworkout metabolic rate. Try one or two of these workouts each week:

5–6 x 3 minutes at 95%–100% maximum (max) heart rate (HR) with 2-minute active recovery periods

4 x 4 minutes at 95%–100% max HR with 3-minute active recovery periods

8–12 x 30 seconds fast with 1-minute active recovery periods

Each of these interval workouts should include a warm-up and a cool-down.

Go Very Long

Long runs or bike rides (≥ 1.5–2 hours at 65%–70% max HR) that stimulate mitochondrial synthesis and promote the depletion of glycogen threaten the muscles’ survival, since carbohydrates are muscles’ preferred fuel. In response to this threat, muscles “learn” how to use fat more effectively and over time become better fat-burning machines.

IDEA Fitness Journal, May 2010



1 Comment

  1. Thanks for posting this, Chris! It’s cool to read the “go very long” info after doing all the training walks for the Rock n Roll without knowing those details.

Leave a comment!

You must be logged in to post a comment.