The fat-burning zone sounds like a great place to be, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t want to burn more fat during a workout – and staying in the fat-burning zone sounds like the perfect way to do it. But is there a better way?
Back in the old days, most fitness instructors used to tell their pupils to “make sure they can still talk” during an aerobic workout – to show they’re staying in the fat-burning zone. Most aerobic training machines have a fat-burning zone clearly marked on the dashboard to entice you to stay within its boundaries. But do you really burn the most fat when you stay in the fat-burning zone?
The Myth of the Fat-Burning Zone
Muscles basically use two types of fuel during a workout – fat and carbohydrates. Protein may be used as fuel too but only during prolonged exercise or starvation. When you exercise at a lower intensity where you’re feeling comfortable and can still talk in complete sentences, you’re training in the fat-burning zone. When you’re in this zone, you burn a higher percentage of fat for fuel than you do carbohydrates. But as you increase the intensity of your workout and move out of the fat-burning zone, the relative amount of fat your body burns decreases as it turns more towards carbohydrates as a fuel source. If your goal is to burn fat, should you slow down a little to stay in the “zone”?
This is where it gets tricky. You’ll burn a higher relative percentage of fat if you stay in the fat-burning zone, but you’ll burn more total calories if you increase the intensity of your workout -and train outside the fat-burning zone. You’ll use a greater ratio of carbohydrates to fat for fuel, but at this higher rate of calorie burn, you’ll still burn more fat overall when you train at a greater intensity.
Another fat-burning factor comes into play after an intense workout. The body needs more resources to recover after a high-intensity workout. Carbohydrate stores have been depleted, and the body turns to fat for fuel until carbohydrates can be replenished. This recovery phase can go on for hours and even days in some cases and is known as the after-burn effect. On the other hand, after a workout in the fat-burning zone, there’s still plenty of glycogen available in the muscles and liver, and the recovery phase is short with little after-burn.
The Benefits of Interval Training
You can’t exercise at a high-intensity for long periods of time, because lactate starts to build up, and you “hit the wall” and are forced to slow down or stop because of fatigue. One way to avoid this is to do interval workouts where you alternate short periods of high-intensity exercise with periods of low-intensity exercise. When you build up lactate during the high-intensity intervals, it can be removed by the liver during the low-intensity or recovery phase. This allows you to recover long enough to tackle another high-intensity interval. This is the whole idea behind interval training and exactly what we do in the AfterBurnTM workout. So, get ready to ignore the fat-burning zone and challenge yourself with high-intensity interval training instead with Cathe’s new low impact AfterBurnTM video – and watch that stubborn fat melt away.
References:
On Fitness Magazine. March/April 2011. Page 66.
Exercise Physiology. Theory and Application to Fitness and Performance. Seventh edition. Powers and Howley. 2009.
fat-burning zone, high-intensity exercise, high-intensity interval, interval workouts
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