But you probably don't think of sitting and sleeping more as a pathway to losing body fat. The bottom line is that just because you're using more fat as energy doesn't mean you're burning more calories.

Exercising at lower intensities will use more fat for energy. Over the years, this theory has become so ingrained in our exercise experience that we see it touted in books, charts, websites, magazines, and even on cardio machines at the gym. The trouble is that it's misleading.

Working at lower intensities can be great, but it won't necessarily burn more fat off your body. One way to increase your calorie burn is to exercise at higher intensities. This doesn't necessarily mean that you should avoid low-intensity exercise if you want to burn more fat.

There are some specific things you can do to burn more fat and it all starts with how often and for how long you exercise.

You may be confused about exactly how hard to work during cardio. You may even think that high-intensity exercise is the only way to go. After all, you can burn more calories and you don't have to spend as much time doing it.

But having some variety can help you stimulate each of your energy systems, protect you from overuse injuries, and help you enjoy your workouts more. You can set up a cardio program that includes a variety of different exercises at different intensities.

Or, if you're not using heart rate zones, about a six to eight on a point perceived exertion scale. What this translates to is exercise at a level that feels challenging and leaves you too breathless to talk in complete sentences. But you're not going all out, as in sprinting as fast as you can.

There's no doubt that some high-intensity training work can be helpful for weight loss as well as improving endurance and aerobic capacity. You can get the same benefit from short workouts spread throughout the day as you do with continuous workouts.

For example, a pound person would burn about calories after running at 6 mph for 30 minutes. If this person walked at 3. But, the number of calories you can burn isn't the whole story. Too many high-intensity workouts every week can put you at risk in a number of ways. If you don't have much experience with exercise, you may not have the conditioning or the desire for breathless and challenging workouts.

If you have any medical condition or injury, check with a healthcare provider before training. If you're doing several days of cardio each week, you would probably want only one or two workouts to fall into the high-intensity range.

You can use other workouts to target different fitness areas like endurance and allow your body to recover. Here are some examples of how to incorporate high-intensity workouts.

One way to incorporate high-intensity workouts is to exercise at a fast pace. You can use any activity or machine for a minute workout at a fast pace, but the idea is to stay in the high-intensity work zone throughout the workout.

Twenty minutes is usually the recommended length, and most people wouldn't want to go much longer than that.

Tabata training is another form of high-intensity interval training in which you work very hard for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, and repeat for 4 minutes. In this workout, you should be breathless and unable to talk.

Additionally, interval training is a great way to incorporate high-intensity training without doing it continuously. Alternate a hard segment e. Repeat this series for the length of the workout, usually around 20 to 30 minutes.

That would be a level four to six on a point perceived exertion scale. You are breathing harder than usual, but can carry on a conversation without much difficulty. Schedule your day around exercise instead of trying to squeeze it in when you can. Making your workout a priority increases the chances that you will accomplish your goal.

The American College of Sports Medicine ACSM often recommends this level of intensity in its exercise guidelines. The lower end of this range usually incorporates the fat-burning zone.

Moderate-intensity workouts also have some great benefits. For instance, even modest movement can improve your health while lowering your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Also, it takes time to build up the endurance and strength to handle challenging exercises. Moderate workouts allow you to work at a more comfortable pace, which means you may be more consistent with your program.

You also can usually get into the moderate heart rate zones with a variety of activities. Even raking leaves or shoveling snow can fall into that category if you do it vigorously enough. For weight management, you would likely want the majority of your cardio workouts to fall into the moderate range.

Some examples include:. This level of intensity is no doubt 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. This fact, along with the idea that it burns more fat, makes low-intensity exercise popular.

But, as we've learned, working at a variety of intensities is ideal for weight loss. That doesn't mean that low-intensity exercise has no purpose, though. It involves the long, slow activities you feel like you could do all day.

Even better, it includes activities you usually enjoy, such as taking a stroll, gardening, riding a bike, or a gentle stretching routine. 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. Mount Elizabeth Proton Therapy Centre. Parkway Cancer Centre. Rehabilitation Services. Urgent Care Centre.

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If you're looking to lose weight and keep fit, the general rule of the game is to increase the intensity of your workouts. But what about the 'fat burning zone' theory that says you should exercise at lower intensities instead? What is the idea behind this concept, and is it true? Your body requires glucose as fuel for your muscles.

The 2 main sources of fuel are glycogen a substance that stores carbohydrate and fat, which breaks down to form glucose and ultimately carbon dioxide and water.

Oxygen is required to oxidise break down either the glycogen or fat stores into glucose to fuel the muscles. During a workout, your body requires more energy. Thus, your heart pumps faster and harder to send oxygen to your muscle cells to break down more glycogen and fat to fuel your muscles.

While 1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories of energy, 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories. This makes glycogen carbohydrate a less dense form of energy storage that is readily broken down into glucose, as compared to fats. As such, glycogen is your body's first source of energy during exercise.

Since high-intensity workouts require more energy quickly, you tap on glycogen rather than fat in your body for fuel. Your body only taps onto the next fuel, fat, when you start to run out of glycogen. The fat burning zone theory seeks to help adherents lose weight by tapping on the body's fat storage rather than glycogen.

They argue that the body burns a greater percentage of fat with lower-intensity exercises than at higher intensities because the body does not require 'fast energy' from glycogen. As such, this theory promotes longer and lower-intensity cardio workouts that maintain your heart rate within the 'fat burning zone'.

However, that is a bit of a misconception. While it is true that the body burns fat during low-intensity workouts, the fat burning rate remains low and you have to exercise longer to burn the same amount of calories you would at higher intensities.

In a high-intensity workout, although your body uses your glycogen stores first for 'fast energy', it depletes the glycogen stores rapidly enough to force your body to tap on the fat storage. This means that high-intensity workouts are more efficient in burning way more total calories — both glycogen and fat calories.

Ultimately, the total number of calories you burn leads to the most weight and fat loss. The intensity of your workout can be estimated by your heart rate during the activity.

The first step to this is to determine your maximum heart rate, which is the upper limit of what your cardiovascular system can handle during physical activity. To calculate your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from For example, a year-old will have a maximum heart rate of This means that on average, the maximum number of heartbeats per minute is for this person.

Next, calculate your desired target heart rate zone. This is the level at which your heart is being exercised and conditioned but not overworked. The following target heart rates are generally recommended:.

Do remember not to rush into achieving a vigorous exercise intensity. If you're just beginning an exercise routine, aim for the lower end of your target heart rate zone. Finally, to know whether or not you're in your target heart rate zone, you can either use an activity tracker or measure it yourself using the following steps:.

Working out with a heart rate monitor helps you to gauge the specific zones in which your body is working and how your body benefits from different intensities of exercise. Each of the 4 main training zones can be predicted by your heart rate:.

These carbs include white bread, most cold cereals, any sweets, rice cakes, white rice, and white potatoes. Do this: The common sense approach is to halve your carbohydrate portions. If you tend to eat a large bagel for breakfast, eat only half and save the rest for tomorrow, or simply eat a smaller bagel.

If you typically eat 2 cups of pasta at dinner, eat just one. At all times during the day, in fact, choose whole-grain foods over refined ones, the only exception being immediately after a workout, when fast-digesting carbs reign supreme for boosting insulin and replenishing muscle glycogen stores see Law 8.

Keep carbs to less than 2g per pound of bodyweight per day. Is a calorie truly a calorie? Not always, because different types of calories can affect your body and your results differently.

Granted, carbs can potentially make you fat, but they also directly fuel your training. Protein, on the other hand, not only adds to your muscle—key in boosting the metabolism—but actually increases your metabolism more directly. The body burns more calories processing protein than it burns to process carbs or fat, known as the thermic effect of food.

When attempting to lose body fat, insulin control is crucial. Refined carbs digest quickly, raising insulin levels substantially, which is why you should avoid them. But if you do happen to eat, say, a bowl of cold cereal typically a fast-digesting carb , you can still take measures to ensure those carbs digest more slowly.

This will cause less insulin to be released and therefore have less of an impact on your ability to burn fat. Do this: One way to slow digestion is to eat carbs with protein and small amounts of fat. Never eat carbs alone. Accompany that bowl of cereal, for example, with scrambled egg whites or cottage cheese.

Alternatively, you could eat plenty of vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, and green salads, with your meals.

These foods actually slow the breakdown and digestion rate of all carbohydrates. At night your insulin sensitivity decreases, meaning your body must release more insulin than usual to put any carbohydrates you eat at night to use in the body.

And by now you know that higher insulin levels can decrease fat-burning and enhance fat storage. In addition, the body naturally produces a fat-liberating hormone called growth hormone within the initial 90 minutes of sleep.

GH not only increases fat-burning but is required to build mass and strengthen the immune system. This allows blood glucose—the high-tech name for digested carbs circulating in the blood—to remain low, which facilitates the rise in nocturnal GH production.

A better option is to eat only protein meals the final four hours before bed, with one protein meal immediately before bedtime that includes only protein, such as a casein shake, low-fat cottage cheese, or chicken breast.

You can, however, eat a small serving of vegetables here if you wish. This arginine-based supplement is also effective when taken before bed, when it can exert a profound surge in GH levels and support fat-burning. Sure, calories and hormones can determine whether your body deposits food into muscle or as body fat, but meal frequency, or how many times you eat each day, affects your overall metabolism.

This is especially true for meals that contain protein. And, of course, eating seven or eight times per day would be even better than six.

This is one way to lean out without having to drastically reduce calories. Frequent feedings tend to increase the chance that what you eat will make its way into muscle tissue rather than being packed away as body fat.

Do this: Eat small meals per day, spaced hours apart. Determine your ideal daily caloric intake for fat-burning see Rule 1 and divide that more or less evenly between your meals.

Depleted, broken-down muscles soak up both protein and carbohydrates for growth and recovery. If you eat too little at this time, you may actually set yourself back by impeding recovery; supporting recovery and growth actually increases metabolism while impeding it slows metabolism.

In terms of spurring recovery and growth, just about the most counterproductive thing you can do after a hard workout is starve yourself.

Do this: Consume g of protein powder such as whey powder and casein along with g of fast-digesting carbs a large baked potato, slices of white bread, or a large sports drink such as Gatorade as soon as possible within an hour after training. When you hit the gym, the body releases a fat-liberating messenger called epinephrine, which attaches itself to fat cells and allows fat to be burned as fuel.

The body burns more calories processing protein than it burns to process carbs or fat, known as the thermic effect of food.

When attempting to lose body fat, insulin control is crucial. Refined carbs digest quickly, raising insulin levels substantially, which is why you should avoid them. But if you do happen to eat, say, a bowl of cold cereal typically a fast-digesting carb , you can still take measures to ensure those carbs digest more slowly.

This will cause less insulin to be released and therefore have less of an impact on your ability to burn fat.

Do this: One way to slow digestion is to eat carbs with protein and small amounts of fat. Never eat carbs alone. Accompany that bowl of cereal, for example, with scrambled egg whites or cottage cheese. Alternatively, you could eat plenty of vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, and green salads, with your meals.

These foods actually slow the breakdown and digestion rate of all carbohydrates. At night your insulin sensitivity decreases, meaning your body must release more insulin than usual to put any carbohydrates you eat at night to use in the body.

And by now you know that higher insulin levels can decrease fat-burning and enhance fat storage. In addition, the body naturally produces a fat-liberating hormone called growth hormone within the initial 90 minutes of sleep.

GH not only increases fat-burning but is required to build mass and strengthen the immune system. This allows blood glucose—the high-tech name for digested carbs circulating in the blood—to remain low, which facilitates the rise in nocturnal GH production.

A better option is to eat only protein meals the final four hours before bed, with one protein meal immediately before bedtime that includes only protein, such as a casein shake, low-fat cottage cheese, or chicken breast.

You can, however, eat a small serving of vegetables here if you wish. This arginine-based supplement is also effective when taken before bed, when it can exert a profound surge in GH levels and support fat-burning.

Sure, calories and hormones can determine whether your body deposits food into muscle or as body fat, but meal frequency, or how many times you eat each day, affects your overall metabolism. This is especially true for meals that contain protein. And, of course, eating seven or eight times per day would be even better than six.

This is one way to lean out without having to drastically reduce calories. Frequent feedings tend to increase the chance that what you eat will make its way into muscle tissue rather than being packed away as body fat.

Do this: Eat small meals per day, spaced hours apart. Determine your ideal daily caloric intake for fat-burning see Rule 1 and divide that more or less evenly between your meals. Depleted, broken-down muscles soak up both protein and carbohydrates for growth and recovery. If you eat too little at this time, you may actually set yourself back by impeding recovery; supporting recovery and growth actually increases metabolism while impeding it slows metabolism.

In terms of spurring recovery and growth, just about the most counterproductive thing you can do after a hard workout is starve yourself.

Do this: Consume g of protein powder such as whey powder and casein along with g of fast-digesting carbs a large baked potato, slices of white bread, or a large sports drink such as Gatorade as soon as possible within an hour after training. When you hit the gym, the body releases a fat-liberating messenger called epinephrine, which attaches itself to fat cells and allows fat to be burned as fuel.

And, you guessed it, carbohydrates come into play here. Refined carbs consumed before training suppress the exercise- and supplement-induced rise in epinephrine compared to eating the same amount of slower-digesting carbs.

Refined carbs also boost insulin levels, further hampering fat-burning during the workout. Bottom line, avoid refined carbs altogether before training. Do this: Fifteen to 30 minutes or less before training, consume 20g of protein powder in a whey shake or other protein powder source and g of carbohydrates to help you train hard all the way through your workout.

Stick with slow-digesting carbs here, such as oat bran, oatmeal, rye or whole-wheat bread, fruit, or sweet potatoes. On nonworkout days, eat that meal as a snack and drop your post-workout feeding. Glycogen is the unused and stored form of carbohydrates in muscles.

When glycogen stores begin to peak from eating plenty of carbs, the body upgrades its fat-storing ability. Conversely, as glycogen stores are depleted, fat-burning increases. You can determine this rate by placing your index finger on your your wrist or neck and counting the beats you feel for 60 seconds.

A healthy RHR is usually between 60 to BPM. Your maximum heart rate MHR , or the maximum number of times your heart can beat in a minute, is calculated by subtracting your age from the number These levels are based on MHR and determine which energy systems your body uses during exercise, directly affecting how many calories you burn.

The fat-burning zone is the lowest intensity. Because the body relies on more stored fat versus carbs as its primary fuel source when you work at a lower intensity compared to a higher intensity. Some people have translated this to mean that you actually burn more fat when you work at a lower intensity, but that's a bit of a misconception.

In reality, picking up the pace will torch more total calories—and ultimately more fat—in less time. To give you an example, the chart below details both the total calories and the fat calories expended by a pound woman during cardio exercise. As you'll see, the woman burns more total calories and more fat calories when working out at a higher intensity.

Now, this isn't to say that low-intensity exercise doesn't have its place, especially if you're just starting out and can't sustain a faster pace. If you go slower, you may be able to exercise a lot longer, so you'll end up burning more calories and fat that way. Even for more advanced exercisers, endurance workouts should be a staple of a complete fitness program along with short, high-intensity interval workouts.

Interval training where you alternate high-intensity exercise with low-intensity recovery periods is proven to increase fitness and burn more calories than steady-state cardio. While lower-intensity workouts are great for building endurance, you need to work harder during some workouts if you really want to burn fat and lose weight.

Thus, varying workout intensity, such as high intensity interval training and steady state cardio, are important for a balanced fitness program. If you want to lose weight, a general cardio schedule would include workouts at a variety of intensities within your target heart rate zone. Low intensity cardio helps you build more stamina because you can work out for longer periods of time.

This, in turn builds endurance and increases the amount of calories you burn overall. A beginner cardio program lets you slowly build endurance while getting you a bit out of your comfort zone. That way, you don't have to spend an entire workout miserable, yet you'll still challenge yourself, which will burn more calories.

Below is a sample program that will help get you started. The key is to start with what you can handle and slowly build from there.

If you're just getting started, don't worry too much about how hard you're working. Focus more on making exercise a habit you can manage on a regular basis. Exercise is not the only way to burn excess fat.

You can also get your body to shed fat by eating a balanced diet , watching your portion sizes , drinking plenty of water , and getting enough sleep.

The more avenues you use, the faster you drop the extra weight. Plus, burning fat or losing weight is not the only goal of cardiovascular exercise. Working out regularly has been found to lower your resting heart rate, which also reduces your risk of dying early from cardiovascular disease.

Everyone's fitness level is different. Additionally, certain medications can affect a person's heart rate. Therefore, before beginning any new workout program, you should consult with your doctor to determine whether that exercise is safe for you and, if it is, what your goal heart rate should be.

Losing more than two pounds a week may not be healthy or sustainable. Your doctor can help you determine your own weight loss goal and refer you to a dietitian for help. The American Heart Association recommends working at a moderate intensity at 50 percent of your maximum heart rate to help avoid injury and burnout before increasing your intensity.

Consistency and hard work pay off. Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available. Targeting heart rate zones as you exercise is one way to maximize the benefits you get from your workouts.

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