| Burn, Baby, Burn: The Truth About Fat Burners |
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| by Diet Detective Editorial Staff | |
| Monday, 01 December 2003 | |
Learn how and when fat burns and how it fits into the weight loss equation."Fat-burning" is the weight loss catch phrase of the moment. Pills, diets and exercises are touted for their ability to burn fat away, creating a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about how to best lose weight. The quest for the best "fat-burning" workout has lead many well-intentioned exercisers astray--believing that some activities will help them lose weight while others won't or avoiding certain forms of exercise that are not "fat-burners." To help sift through the confusion, let's take a look at how unwanted body fat is really lost.
The fuel your body needs for exercise is supplied by two primary sources: stored carbohydrate, called glycogen, which is stored in your muscles and liver; and stored body fat. Protein is not a major source of energy during exercise. The intensity of your workout and your level of fitness determines how many calories you burn during exercise and where the calories come from (carbs or fat). According to sports nutrition expert Nancy Clark, M.S., R.D., your muscles primarily burn fat for energy during low intensity exercise, such as walking. During light to moderate activity, such as jogging, fat supplies 50 to 60 percent of your body's fuel. If you're doing high-intensity activity, such as sprinting or racing, you're relying primarily on stored carbohydrates (or glycogen) for fuel. Your body proportionally burns more carbohydrate and less fat as you progress from lower to higher intensity exercise.
Low-intensity exercise has thus gained the reputation of being "fat-burning" exercise. Does this mean you should choose to walk instead of jog to lose more fat? I'll let you in on a little secret--if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Although a higher percentage of the calories burned during low-intensity activity come from fat, you're ultimately burning less total calories. At higher exercise intensity, the percentage of calories supplied from fat may decrease, but the overall calories burned will increase. Check out the numbers: If you go for a 30-minute walk, you'll burn about 100 calories, almost all from fat. On the other hand, if you go for a 30-minute jog, you'll burn about 300 calories, 50 to 60 percent from fat or around 150 to 180 calories. In the end, the higher intensity exercise burns more calories and more fat.
Level of fitness also plays a part in the equation. If you stick to an exercise program, your body will become more efficient and will burn a greater percentage of fat for fuel at any given level of exercise intensity. This will spare your glycogen reserves from being depleted as quickly, enabling you to exercise comfortably for a longer period of time (burning more calories). Your muscles and liver can only store enough glycogen to fuel about 1 ½ to 2 hours of continuous exercise.
In the end, the most important point to remember is that fat burning is not synonymous with weight loss. To actually lose body fat, you must create a calorie deficit for the day. As long as by the end of the day you've eaten fewer calories than you need, you'll dip into your fat stores and burn fat for energy. Any form of exercise, "fat burning" or not, will help you reach this goal. So, as for what kind of exercise you should do, the real key is finding something you like to do. That way you'll stick with it. Bookmark:            Trackback(0)
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