In Weight Loss
It Isn't Just Burning Fat.......

The Right Approach

The approach to burning fat, the optimized one, should get you to burn more total calories and more fat calories as well.

I want to talk about the many things in regards to fat burning.

Lower intensity cardio exercise burns off more fat since it's slower in tempo and longer in time which suits fine for fat since fat is a slow burning fuel that needs oxygen.

After 20 minutes of workout, fat is the primary source of energy you burn. This means that if you workout a little less hard for a little longer time, you burn more fat in relation to glucose.

But you need to exercise for at least 20 minutes for this to happen - the release of fatty acid from the storage sites into your blood.

(P/S: You've also a certain amount of fatty acid that you'll never use as fuel unless you do low intensity exercise for at least 20 minutes)

But there's a catch here.

You also burn fewer total calories and less total fat.

Let's do some comparison here between low and high intensity exercise, to see their differences in burning fat :

You exercise at a slow rate that burns 60% fat and 40% glucose - say walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes. You burn 180 calories in total and 108 calories of fat specifically.

You exercise at a high rate that burns 30% fat and 70% glucose -say running on a treadmill for 30 minutes. You burn 400 calories in total and 120 calories of fat specifically.

Do you see? The total calories you burn is higher in the high intensity exercise which, if you want to lose weight, would be a better fat burning measure.

This leads to the fact that in weight loss, what matters is how many calories you burn, not so much whether they're fat or carbohydrate calories.

The gist of the matter is that you may burn a lower percentage of fat working out at higher intensity but since you burn more total calories, you still burn more fat calories.

Yeah, in a way.

We all know that muscle burns more fat and burns more calories than fat does. As weight training promotes muscle growth, the more muscle you've, the more fat and more calories you'll burn.

1 additional lb of muscle you pack into your body, you'll get to burn off an extra of 30-50 calories per day while you're at rest.

The after burn, or the the amount of calories you burn after you stop exercising or really another way of putting it is simply your metabolism increases for several hours or longer after a workout.

This after burn effect happens if you exercise sustainably at a high intensity level.

Lifting weights is one such exercise to land you into this after burn effect.

Make your weights workout vigorous, with the number of repetitions kept at between 8 and 12 which is within a range that should provide strength and bigger muscle growth.

Apparently, it doesn't matter what time you exercise, as long as you exercise!

But this logic might be of interest to you - in the morning, the levels of your muscle and liver glycogen are low due to the "overnight fasting" phase when you sleep.

You wake up with depleted glycogen and lower blood sugar which sets the optimum environment for burning fat instead of carbohydrate.

See more about when to exercise here.

Technically, when you've worked out for 15 or 20 minutes, your body would shift to using a higher percentage of fat for energy.

But again, if you want to lose weight, it's about the total number of calories burned, not necessarily the energy source.

Do interval training!

Push yourself. Vary your training intensity between 65% of your total capacity to 85% and 95%. This approach of burning fat will help you blast off the most calories from fat.

If you do true interval training for 30 minutes and changes the intensity level of your workout from 65% to 95% and back to 65%, you'll burn more in total calories and in fat calories as well.

The best interval training approach? Combine weights and cardio in a circuit interval session.

You would then train using both energy systems, aerobic and anaerobic, to optimise the calorie-burning effects.

It's your priority that dictates which intensity level you want to workout at.

If your priority is to lose weight, go for high intensity exercise which burns more total calories and ultimately more fat calories as well since in weight loss, it's the total amount of calories burned that counts.

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