Forget About Burning Fat and Start Burning Calories

It's about calories and fitness. Period! Forget about the fat burning zone.

Let’s set this straight once and for all. In my opinion the fat burning zone and the Atkins diet are in the same category: designed for the lazy and a gross distortion of the facts. Do you really think that moving at a “walk through the park” pace is the best use of your “fitness” time? The Fat Burning Zone is another one of those health club propagated myths. The fat burning zone is fiction. The reality is that it's about the number of calories burned, not the number of those calories that come from fat as a source. The "fat burning zone" describes a level of physical exertion that results in a larger number of the burned calories being derived from fat. True, but by picking up the pace you will burn more overall calories including more from fat and increase your heart and lung work rate thus improving your cardio fitness. The fat burning zone actually describes what percentage of calories burned are derived from fat as an energy source. If you want to utilize burning the highest percentage of fat then take a reclining position on the couch and do nothing. The highest percentage of fat utilization is at rest. The more intense the exercise becomes, the more carbohydrate is used as a source, not to mention your cardio output and muscle fiber recruitment Utilizing interval training or circuit training is far superior for loosing fat that exercising in the “fat burning zone”. In other words the more intense the output of exercise the more fat is going to be burned. The best approach to loosing fat is to exercise at high intensity.

A study from the University of South Wales released in January 2007 supports this approach.

The study involved a group of 45 overweight women who cycled three times a week over a 15-week period. “The group which did around eight seconds of sprinting on a bike, followed by 12 seconds of exercising lightly for twenty minutes, lost three times as much fat as other women, who exercised at a continuous, regular pace for 40 minutes,” said the team leader, Associate Professor Steve Boutcher, Head of the Health and Exercise Science program, in the School of Medical Sciences at UNSW.

“We think the reason that it works is because it produces a unique metabolic response,” said Professor Boutcher. “Intermittent sprinting produces high levels of chemical compounds called catecholamines, which allow more fat to be burned from under the skin and within the exercising muscles. The resulting increase in fat oxidation drives the greater weight loss.”

The women lost most weight off the legs and buttocks. “This maybe unique to this type of exercise,” said Professor Boutcher. “We know it is very difficult to ‘spot reduce’ troublesome fat areas. When you do regular exercise, you tend to lose fat everywhere and you tend to look emaciated. Our results are unusual but were consistent across the women who performed the sprinting exercise.”