Qazwsxedc

On the running machine I have at my gym, there is a diagram illustrating the Cardio Zone and a Fat Burning Zone and what heart rate will put you into what zone for a given age.

For my age (25) it says i should have a heart rate between 117-125 to be in the the Fat burning zone (from what i remember).

my question is, does being in one zone or the other REALLY matter that much if you want to lose fat?

If my heart rate is in the cardio zone am i not burning fat at the same time compared to hte fat burning zone? wouldn't having a higher heart rate lead to burning more calories, which leads to burning more fat compared to being in the Fat burning zone??

Spartak

As far as I can tell.

Fat Burning Zone only exists so unfit people still have a feeling of achievement, when they are cranking it along at a walking pace.

Cardio Zone gives your cardiovascular a decent workout as well as burning a shitload of calories.

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hannukah harry

basically, the lower your heart rate is while doing cardio, the more fat being burned compared to carbohydrate. when you hit the higher heart rates, your going to be getting more benefit to your cardiovascular system and heart, but burning more carbs compared to fat. the catch is that the harder you work, the more calories you burn overall. so you could work for an hour at the lower intensity and burn the same amount of fat as you would working 30-40 minutes at a higher intensity, but more calories overall at the higher intensity because more carbs are being burned to keep up that intensity.

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apeman

i'd understood that 220 bpm and take away your current age was about what you want to hit ... ~ 110 sounds like a joke to me, but i don't know for sure about that

this page says 220 minus age is not a bad estimate, but that there are better - take a look : http://home.hia.no/~stephens/hrchngs.htm

so i'm only 2 years older than you, reasonably fit now, and i'd want to get my heart rate up around 180 for 30 mins...

basically any exercise is going to help, but the more research you do the more you will get out of it

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Spartak

I don't know, when I hit the "Fat Burning Zone" regime on a cross trainer/bike, I wasn't even breaking a sweat and I thought what the hell ? Then switched to Cardio and got a decent workout.

Go figure.

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coash

it's obvious that you can't use one universal chart to represent people of different fitness abilities, not to mention numerous other variables. trial and error, if it's working at that pace then stick with it.

sailor

Strikes me as a gimmick.

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pocon1

Estimates for cardio effect. 220 minus age, then take 60% to 85% of that number. For example:
Apeman: 27 y.o. estimated max 193
lowest cardio benefit:115.8 bpm
theoretical highest level of cardio:165 bpm

This is to get a cardio workout. Beyond 165, theoretically apeman would then start burning sugar without the benefit of enough oxygen, the result being lactic acid buildup, and then failure of the muscles. However, as apeman increased his cardio conditioning, particularly by staying towards a training HR of 75 to 85%, he would increase his VO2 max, meaning he could deliver more oxygen per heartbeat.
Same max heartrate, more work accomplished.
as far as weight loss, more calories burned is more weight lost. Total calories are the biggest determinant of weight loss. Everything else is way below that in importance.

hannukah harry

you might want to look into the kevornian method (i know i spelled it wrong). anyways, that method uses heart rate reserve rather than heart rate max for determining heart rate (or vo2 range with vo2res) work ranges. the ACSM prefers that method these days.

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chrisnz

Kinda Off-Topic: What's the ACSM?

sadatx

Those diagrams use the simplest most general calculations and are therefore not that accurate. Honestly, forget the equations and pay attention to how you feel and how hard your breathing.

A good rule of thumb, you want to be at a point where you can just speak a sentence without stopping for a breath. This is probably a good instensity for you.

Honestly, don't worry about what the best intensity level is yet. The important thing is to just get into a routine of exercising.

hannukah harry

American College of Sports Medicine. for all intents and purposes, they're the organization that sets the standards for care involving exercise and exercise prescription. so if you were a personal trainer or exercise physiologist, or worked in some other area of exercise or exercise testing (like heart stress tests), their guidelines are generally used in court as the benchmark... if you followed their guideliens and something went wrong (ie. person got injured, etc), you'd be found to not be negligent because you followed the standard of care for the industry.

http://www.acsm.org

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pocon1

Yes Harry, the Karvonen HRR method (heart rate reserve) is considered to be the better one to use because it reflects resting pulse, but to make things less complicated for the average person, the 60-85% method works pretty well. For those who want to know, the HRR method uses the resting pulse in the calculations. The better (lower) your pulse is, the harder you have to work to increase your workload.
220- your age
example 20 yo.
estimated max heart rate=200bpm
if this person's pulse was 60 bpm, take 60 from 200, multiply result by target of 60-85%, and then add in pulse to get number
200-60=140 140x85%= 119+60 bpm=179 estimated 85% working level.
normal method=200x85%=170

if person was resting pulse 90 bpm, then total would be 183.5 for 85% at HRR.

Qazwsxedc

wow.. there's some great info here. thanks guys!!

Qazwsxedc

this is the part i don't understand. the harder you work (as indicated by a higher heart rate), the more calories you burn thus the more fat burned.. isn't this how it works?

how can a "fat burning" heart heart lead to more fat burned when you aren't working very hard?

it seems to me that the harder you run, the better the fat burning results will be..

coash

pocon said weight loss, not fat loss. calories can come from stored glycogen, which is the preferred source at a higher intensity level.

pocon1

Q, at rest you burn about 50% fat. At close to 100% intensity, you burn almost all carbs. But, at a low cardio intensity, the ratio might be 20% fat. So yes, you burn more fat as a ratio at a slower pace, but you burn fewer calories per hour. The longer you go, the less carbs to burn, more fat is burned. Of course, this is the point where you feel like you cannot do anymore. If you have ever done an hour of cardio at a medium to high level of intensity, you know when your carbs get low and you burn more and more fat. You simply cannot keep up the pace.
So end result is, calories in, calories out. burn more calories than you take in, and you will lose weight.

Qazwsxedc

ahh... i was confused between the calories and fat relationship.

I thought the more calories you burn using a high level of cardio intensity will result in more fat being burned. but from what i'm reading, this relationship only holds true for longer cardio workouts at a high intensity. (correct me if i'm wrong)

if i only do cardio for 15min (including warmup/cool down) 2-3 times a week and my goal is FAT BURNING, then doing lower intensity is the way to go? or should i just stick with my HIIT regime?

hannukah harry

^^^
nononononono... assuming i understand what you're saying right (and i'm drunk right now)...

higher intensity = more calories burned, less from fat (by ratio)
lower intensity = less calories burned, more of them from fat (by ratio)

so if you're only doin g 15 minutes of cardio (and you should be doing more), you'll burn more calories overall by doing higher intensity.

oh, and if you're only doing 15 minutes including warm up and cool down then you're only doing 5 minutes of actual cardio... that's not enough... you really should be aiming for 30 minutes 4-5 days a week. if you want to burn fat, the more the better and weigh ttrain too.

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pocon1

Harry has it absolutely right.

Lets pretend a 60% hr long cardio session burns 400 calories an hour. Say that you do 1 hour. Pretend that 160 of those calories comes from fat.

Now say you do 40 minutes of cardio at 85% of your heart rate. You burn 900 calories an hour, so 40 minutes equals 600 calories. of those, only 150 comes from fat.

So in the end, the shorter, higher intensity session burned more calories and was more efficient, but it burned fewer fat calories.

But for weight loss purposes, the most important factor is to eat fewer calories than you burn off.

HIIT can be ok, but if you are really looking for weight loss and not concerned about cardio, then you have to get in the grind and increase your volume of cardio. Maybe do 1 or 2 days a week of hiit and several days of longer sessions.

sadatx

Yes, but you're missing the point of why many trainers argue for HIIT.

Their point is that if you only have 20 minutes to workout HIIT is better since you burn more total calories overall AND more fat calories overall. If you did a low intensity jog for the same twenty minutes a greater PERCENTAGE of calories burned would come from fat HOWEVER since you'd be burning far fewer calories over all the total fat calories burned would be less than if you did the HIIT for the same amount of time.

Some trainers also argue that HIIT is inherently anabolic, whereas long distance endurance running is catabolic.

I will say this though, I think they overstress this last point and people tand to shy away from potentially beneficial low intensity endurance training.

I think alternating both methods is best. Although if you're in poor shape I think starting off with low intensity is the best way to go.

Jim Kata

*Bump*

Ok, I'm a bit confused...i read this thread twice thinking maybe I missed something but I'm still confused.

I'm about 148lbs. 5 foot 6. And 28 years old. I've been going to the gym for a couple of weeks now and am trying to lose some weight.
I get on the elliptical machine for a good 30 to 40 minutes....daily (and watch what I eat). My heart rate ranges from 170-185 when I'm on the elliptical machine. Now am I going about this wrong? Am I doing something unhealthy? I'm starting to think I need to slow down to burn the calories and fat (see..I told you I was confused).
Sorry for the ignorance...but I couldn't understand the advice above.
Anyone want to try and explain it again, but act as if you are talking to a 10 year old so I understand it?

Yakk

I've seen that quoted as your maximium heart rate, not a target heart rate.

I haven't heard anyone claiming you should regularly hit your maximium heart rate as a matter of course.

The portion of energy from fat changes with intensity -- the higher the intensity, the lower the portion of fat being burned, and the larger the portion of carbs (glycogen mainly, IIRC).

Your body only has so much carb researves availiable at one time.

If you work harder you burn more fat per unit time.

But, you burn less fat per unit of carbs.

At a low intensity, you can work out for longer, and burn more fat, before you run out of carbs. This is important if you get exausted after 15 minutes on the bike -- had you worked out easier, you might have lasted 45 minutes, and burned more fat.

If you aren't working out to anywhere near exastion, working out harder should burn more fat. So, if your limit is time rather than carb reserves, I think a harder workout makes sense.

If you are working out to exastion, working out easier will burn more fat, at least in the short term.

If you are working out for a fixed period of time infrequently (so you recover completely between sessions), barring injuring yourself, the best way to burn fat is to work out as hard as you can for that session.

Anyone disagree with the above? It is just how I understand how it works. =)

As far as I know, so long as you aren't injuring yourself (and a few other provisos*), I don't think you are doing anything horrible.

I was under the impression that one of the benefits of pushing into the higher end of your cardio zone was the training -- your cardio capabilities (max VO2) will go up, which allows you to work out harder in the future, and hence can burn more calories in the long term.

* I could see working out harder resulting in you eating more. Harder work = less carbs in blood = more hunger = eat more, with the possibility that the appitite increase outpaces the better fat burning. But what do I know? =)

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ryfo

i am on a high dose of meds that keep your heart rate down therefore all the aboves rules dont work the way i work out is i get to the stage where i can still hold a conversation, but am pushing myself while doing the workout. If I start puffing while talking i just tone down the workout a bit. (this method only works if there is someone else to talk to, otherwise try singing to yourself)

thingstodo

Everyone's body is different. The old 220-age doesn't work if you are in shape. For example, I'm 40 and my max heart rate is 185 because I've been tested. That is better than that of a normal 30 year old based on the 220-age method. I only wish I was 30 with 48 year old experience. Ahem.... a heart rate monitor will help you figure this all out or you can get tested. In any event, a monitor really helps you work through your zone. Another good measure is how quickly you can drop 20-30 bpm after you've been at your anerobic thresh hold.

The more time yo spend in the 60-85% the more your body burns fat AND calories. However, it only burns glycogen above 85% and when that is used up, guess what....there's only muscle to burn. So, go over 85% to build your body to increase that thresh hold.

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