A toned physique and optimal health are common goals for many. A crucial component of achieving this is understanding how our bodies burn fat. This article explores the science behind fat burning, busts some common myths, and provides practical tips for effective weight management.
Introduction to Fat Burning
Your body stores energy as fat to ensure survival. You might have come across numerous products or methods promoting quick fat burning, such as the fat-burning zone, spot reduction, and certain foods or supplements. However, if your goal is to decrease your body’s fat storage, understanding how to burn fat through various types of exercise is more effective than seeking a short-term solution. Let’s dive into the basics of fat burning.
Understanding Fat Burning
To efficiently burn fat, consider the following:
- Exercise consistently
- Engage in high, medium, and low-intensity cardiovascular exercise
- Lift weights that challenge you
- Try circuit training
- Include compound exercises in your routine
- Manage your stress levels
- Ensure you get adequate sleep
- Increase your total daily energy expenditure
- Consume the appropriate amount of calories for your goal
The Science Behind Fat Burning
If you aim to decrease your body’s fat storage, understanding how your body utilizes calories for fuel can significantly influence your approach to weight management. Your body draws energy from fat, carbohydrates, and protein. The type of fuel your body uses depends on the kind of activity you’re engaged in.
Although using more fat might seem like the perfect way to lose fat, using more fat doesn’t necessarily translate into losing more fat. Understanding the best way to burn fat requires basic knowledge about how your body gets its energy[^1^].
Your body primarily uses fat and carbohydrates for fuel. The proportion of these fuels utilized shifts depending on your activity level. Protein is occasionally used during exercise, but it’s mainly used to repair the muscles post-exercise.
High-intensity exercises, like fast-paced running, cause your body to rely more on carbs for fuel. This is because the metabolic pathways available to break down carbs for energy are more efficient than those for fat breakdown. Fat is used more for energy than carbs during longer, slower exercises.
However, the main takeaway is that burning more calories is more important than using fat for energy. The harder you work, the more calories you burn overall.
What matters is not the type of fuel you use, but how many calories you burn. Even when you sit or sleep, you’re in your prime fat-burning mode. But you wouldn’t consider sitting and sleeping as effective methods for losing body fat. The bottom line is, burning more fat as energy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re burning more calories.
The Fallacy of the Fat-Burning Zone
The theory of the fat-burning zone suggests that working at a certain heart rate zone (around 55% to 65% of your maximum heart rate) will enable your body to burn more fat[^2^].
This theory has been widely propagated in books, websites, magazines, and even on gym cardio machines. However, it’s misleading.
Exercising at lower intensities does burn more fat for energy, but it doesn’t necessarily burn more fat off your body. One way to increase your calorie burn is to exercise at higher intensities.
This doesn’t mean that you should avoid low-intensity exercise if you want to burn more fat. There are specific strategies you can employ to burn more fat, and it all starts with how frequently and for how long you exercise.
Burning Fat with a Combination of Cardio Intensities
The intensity of your cardio workouts may be a source of confusion. You might even think that high-intensity exercise is the only way to go. After all, you can burn more calories, and it doesn’t take as much time.
However, incorporating a variety of intensities can stimulate all your energy systems, protect you from overuse injuries, and increase the enjoyment of your workouts. You can design a cardio program that includes a variety of different exercises at different intensities.
High-Intensity Cardio
High-intensity cardio falls between about 80% to 90% of your maximum heart rate (MHR), or a six to eight on a 10-point perceived exertion scale. This translates to exercise at a level that feels challenging and leaves you breathless, making you unable to talk in complete sentences[^3^].
High-intensity training can be beneficial for weight loss as well as for improving endurance and aerobic capacity. However, too many high-intensity workouts every week can put you at risk of burnout, inconsistency, overtraining, and overuse injuries[^4^].
Moderate-Intensity Cardio
Moderate-intensity exercise typically falls between 70% to 80% of your maximum heart rate. At this level, you are breathing harder than usual but can carry on a conversation without much difficulty[^5^].
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) often recommends this level of intensity in its exercise guidelines. Even moderate movement can improve your health while lowering your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
Low-Intensity Activity
Low-intensity exercise is below 60% to 70% of your MHR, or about a level three to five on a 10-point perceived exertion scale. This level of intensity is one of the most comfortable areas of exercise, keeping you at a pace that isn’t too taxing and doesn’t pose much of a challenge[^2^].
Low-intensity cardio can be something you do all day long by doing an extra lap when you’re shopping, taking the stairs, parking farther from the entrance, and doing more physical chores around the house. Exercise such as Pilates and yoga are at a lower intensity but help develop your core, flexibility, and balance.
Consistent Exercise for Effective Fat Burning
Regular exercise not only helps you burn fat but also leads to adaptations in your body that enhance your ability to burn more fat without even trying.
Benefits of Consistent Exercise
Here are some benefits of consistent exercise:
- Your body becomes more efficient at delivering and extracting oxygen, helping your cells burn fat more efficiently.
- Better circulation allows fatty acids to move more efficiently through the blood and into the muscle, making fat more readily available for fueling the body.
- An increase in the number and size of mitochondria, the cellular power plants that provide energy inside each cell of your body.
Strength Training for Fat Burning
Adding more muscle by lifting weights and doing other resistance exercises can also help with burning fat[^6^]. While many people focus more on cardio for weight loss, there’s no doubt that strength training is a key component in any weight loss routine.
Benefits of Strength Training
Here are some benefits of strength training:
- If you lift weights at a higher intensity, you can increase your afterburn, or the calories you burn after your workout.
- A diet-only approach to weight loss could lower a person’s resting metabolic rate by up to 20% a day. Lifting weights and maintaining muscle helps keep the metabolism up, even if you’re
