Reassuringly, the key to burning fat while exercising is to exercise much more gently than many of us expect.
Chavez Guevara said there are “good reasons” to want to find your fat-burning zone, and it has little to do with weight loss or appearance. Adipose tissue can have undesirable effects on metabolism, even in people of normal weight. He says fat cells often release substances associated with inflammation and insulin dysfunction, which contribute to diabetes, heart disease and other conditions.
Therefore, reducing body fat generally improves health. And the right amount of exercise can help you lose fat. Exercise requires fuel. It can come from food you’ve eaten recently or from fats and carbohydrates stored in your body’s tissues.
Whether you primarily burn fat or carbohydrates during exercise is determined primarily by the intensity of your workout. As a general rule of thumb, the harder you work, the more your body becomes dependent on carbohydrates.
It may come as a surprise to some, but the lighter your workout, the more fat your body uses for fuel, which means simple exercise is the key to getting into the fat-burning zone.
3 ways to find your fat burning zone
The goal is to find a pace of exercise where most of the calories you burn come from fat. Exercise scientists define a person’s “fat burning zone” as a level of exercise that keeps their heart rate within about 10% of their pace. To find your own fat-burning zone, consider one of her three approaches:
Please visit our laboratory. If you want the most accurate measurements, go to a physiology lab and have exercise and metabolism tests done. Some hospitals, universities, and even fitness centers offer such tests for a fee. If your doctor recommends testing, the cost may be covered by your insurance.
DIY with heart rate monitor and calculator. You can also estimate your specific fat-burning zone by walking on a treadmill and doing a little math, Chavez-Guevara said. First, calculate your maximum heart rate. The commonly used equation of subtracting age from 220 is “not very accurate,” Chavez-Guevara said. Instead, try wearing a heart rate monitor or smartwatch and walking or jogging on a treadmill at a pace that feels comfortable at first. Increase your speed every 3 to 5 minutes until your pace becomes quite exhausting and your heart rate plateaus. This is your maximum heart rate (or close to it).
Then calculate 60 percent of that number and aim to exercise around that heart rate, Chavez-Guevara said.in new review Published in the Journal of Sports Medicine, he and his colleagues collated data from 64 previous studies of approximately 7,500 obese men and women who completed exercise tests, and found that heart rates between 57 and 66 percent of maximum heart rate They found that those who exercised had the highest burn rate. of fat. Chavez-Guevara said that for most people without obesity, a similar heart rate would probably maximize fat burning.
However, to burn a meaningful amount of fat, you need to keep moving at that pace for more than a few minutes, he continued. According to his group’s research, 40 minutes of easy walking appears to be near the optimal point for burning fat.
Make exercise a little easier. You can also let your body be your fat burning guide.in past researchpeople who were asked to walk at a speed they thought they could maintain for at least 45 minutes usually settled on a pace that was right in their fat-burning zone.
The pace also tends to be slower than many of us expect, hovering around 2.5 to 3 miles per hour, or just 20 minutes per mile, for many people, Chavez-Guevara said. . “Most people can manage it,” he said, even if they’re new to exercise.
Ignoring the gym’s fat burning zone chart
You may be tempted to just use the fat burning charts posted online and at many gyms. But they are too general to be useful; small new research find.
For the study, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, collected data from 26 men and women representing a range of ages, weights, and fitness levels who completed exercise tests in the institution’s physiology lab. did. The test used heart rate and breathing monitors to determine the intensity and heart rate at which each person burned the highest percentage of fat, and from there identified their fat burning zones.
The scientists then compared those zones to those advised in typical health club charts.
There was not much agreement. Hannah D. Kittrell, a doctoral candidate at Icahn Mount Sinai who led the study, said some people’s measured fat-burning zones were within the range of typical chart numbers. . But some differed by as much as 10 beats per minute.
“It might not be a big deal,” Kittrell said. However, for some people his 10 beats per minute can be the difference between walking and jogging. This means that people who use graphs to set the pace of their training may be exercising too hard or too lightly to maximize fat burning.
Meals and timing affect fat burning
Whichever method you choose to find your fat-burning zone, be sure to be careful about what you eat post-workout so that the fat you just burned doesn’t come back quickly, Chavez-Guevara says. Told.
There are also many unanswered questions, at least in part, about how fat burning zones differ between lean and obese people. The role of gender, fitness, and diet in fat burning. And whether time of day is important. Some studies have shown that the same walk can burn more fat in the afternoon than in the morning.
But those are minor concerns, Chavez-Guevara said. In general, if your main goal is to lose some body fat, take it easy.
Have fitness questions? Email [email protected] I may answer your question in a future column.
