Hello Cardio Maniac!
If you are normally the one with the fat burning zone gadgets attached to your wrist or chest, learn here why “the fat burning zone” is not the best way to lose fat. The idea is easy to explain. It is even easier to understand if you get rid of old notions and give the new way to train a try. That is if you want results. Got your attention?
See the old way of staying in the “fat burning zone” was a long, dragged out way of training with the idea that if you worked out moderately (meaning not intensely,) for long periods of time, you would burn more calories from fat. When you were done working out, you were done burning calories. Here is why that is not the best way to lose weight or should I say, fat. The most important thing in fat loss, is a calorie deficit. This can happen in one of two ways. Either starve…NEVER a good way to try to lose, or to burn off calories with exercise. Although you cannot out exercise a bad diet, you can exercise in a way that will keep you burning calories, long after you are done working out. The way to do that is to GET OUT of the fat burning zone. Yes, work out so hard and so intensely that your post exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) is so high, that you continue to burn calories hours, or in some cases days after you have stopped the training session. Whether you chose to do cardiovascular workouts by running, doing stairs, sprinting, or interval training with weights, keep it intense. As a matter of fact, the studies done now in exercise physiological research show that the higher the intensity, the longer and more the caloric burn. Want to know the best thing about this type of workout session? It is short. It is so short, and so hard, that you could not do it for a long time. The way to determine if you are working out hard enough is this, if you can do this type of beast mode workout for longer than 30 minutes, you are not working out hard enough. So shorten the length of the rest periods, and amp up the working part of the session. This is how you will see results.
So go ahead. Either grab the weights, get on the treadmill, or find some bleachers in a local high school football field. And move your ass hard. Fast, hard, and for short bursts of optimal output. Forget the classic old “fat burning zone” and get into the zone that keeps you burning calories all day long.
Then when you are done with your 30 minute session, use that extra hour that you would have spent on the treadmill plugging along, and go buy some smaller, tighter jeans!!
In health and strength,
Dawn