Fitness Myth # 3: Train In The Fat Burning Zone For Best Results
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Heard this one before? It’s one of the biggest misconceptions in the exercise and weight-loss world. If long, slow, steady-state aerobics was the key to fat loss every person doing it would be in phenomenal shape. Truth is, most are NOT reaching their goal and many are in terrible shape despite long hours of training.
Many studies have now entirely debunked the theory that cardio on a treadmill, bike, or elliptical machine is effective. There’s a simple reason for this - endurance training is to become efficient and better at running, biking or swimming. But this type of training is actually proven to waste muscle tissue, the exact opposite of what we want to achieve with maximal weight loss.
Yes I know, I’ve also heard that it burns more calories. Muscles hard at work demand lots of oxygen to help them continue working. However, effective functional fitness does the same, so no brownie points for joggers here. Though the body does burn a greater percentage of fat at lower intensity exercises (about 50 percent of calories from fat, with higher intensity exercise clocking in at 35 percent), the higher intensity exercises shine by burning more total calories—and more fat calories overall—than their lower intensity counterparts.
So while aerobic training does make you burn a lot of calories, it doesn’t require the muscle tissue to last. And that’s a key point because the only tissue that burns fat in the body is muscle. Bummer, as aerobics are incredibly ineffective at building and maintaining your body’s fat-burning tools.
It’s also been beaten to death that lower intensity exercises raise the metabolism. Not true, as metabolism is largely a function of how much muscle have on your body. Remember, low intensity exercise is a muscle waster, meaning it not only DOES NOT build it, it destroys it.
The Adaptation Conundrum
The body is an incredibly efficient machine. It protects us by adapting to circumstances in a reverse manner. So when you hit the weights hard, the body adapts by building muscle. Lower intensity exercises such as long distance running or aerobics make the body slow down its metabolism and store more fat.
The entire point of endurance activities is to become better at the aerobic component. Once this is achieved, you’ll burn fewer calories and lose less weight. That means the more efficient you become at a certain aerobic exercise throughout the years, the longer it takes to burn the same amount of calories. Effectively, your finish line gets further away all the time. With weight exercises, you simply add more reps, more weight or intensity to keep the finish line close by. It’s simple – don’t ALLOW the body to adapt. That however, takes hard work.
Caloric Expenditure
To lose body fat, you must burn off more calories than you consume. This truism is the same whether we exercise or diet. With nutrition, it’s better to eat healthy, natural foods which are low fat by nature, that to consume a nonsensical low carb, low fat, or high protein diet. It’s a simple rule that works well.
With exercise, the key to achieving this is with anaerobic training, which burns calories while you are working out and increases the calories burned for hours afterwards. This is known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). In other words, from bouts of short, exhaustive exercise (interval training or circuit weight training), it can take many hours for the metabolic rate back to get back to pre-exercise levels. That means a higher caloric expenditure will keep going in that time period and you lose more body fat. Keep the weight component in your exercise regime and you add back muscle for a well defined physique.
Congratulations, you know the secret. Now get out there and do it!
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Filed under: Diet (Nutrition), Fat Loss, Fitness Myths, Metabolism, Workouts - Cardio, Workouts - HIIT Tagged: Adipose tissue, Aerobic exercise, Calorie, EPOC, High-protein diet, Muscle, Physical exercise, Weight loss Image may be NSFW.
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