I want you to do me a favor. I know you’re gonna hate it, but please do it anyway. I promise you it will make life so much simpler…make things so much clearer…and save us so much time in the coming months.
I want you to go back to school with me for a minute, and review some simple math.
Now, when I teach this stuff to trainers and clients, as soon as they hear the word “math” their eyes glaze over and they look like a collective herd of deer caught in the headlights of a Mack truck. But, honestly, how are you going to talk sensibly about calories, diets like “40/30/30,” percentages of calories from protein, decoding a food label, or anything else along those lines without clearing up some of the basics in the math department? You can’t!
Which brings me to the area of “fat-burning” zones.
See, one of the biggest misunderstandings and “myth-conceptions” in the field of exercise and weight loss has been around the field of fat-burning. Aerobic teachers are constantly admonishing their students to work at a slower rate so they can “burn more fat.” Almost all cardio equipment in the gym has a “fat burning” program, and fitness professionals are constantly bombarded with questions from clients about how to get their heart rate in the targeted “fat burning zone.”
The misconceptions come from a basic confusion between percentages and absolute amounts. At rest, the body is always burning a mix of fuels. All other things being equal, it doesn’t like to burn protein. So that leaves fats and carbohydrates (more technically, fatty acids and glucose). At rest, the “average” person burns about 70 percent fat and 30 percent carbs. As one moves from rest to activity, the percentage of fuel coming from fat decreases and the percentage coming from carbs increases. The more intense the exercise, the more carbs and the less fat in the mix, until you reach the point called the “anaerobic threshold” where you’re going at about your intensity limit. At that point, 99 percent or more of your fuel is pure carbohydrate and 1 percent or less is coming from fat.
Now, this situation has led many people to assume that in order to “burn fat” they need to exercise at lower intensities.
They’re missing the boat.
Why? Because while at rest, although a higher percentage of your calories is indeed coming from fat, you are ultimately burning a lower absolute number of calories. At higher-intensity exercise, the percentage of calories from fat goes down…true…but it is a percentage of a significantly higher number.
To illustrate this critical difference, I often ask people to picture Ross Perot standing next to me. Then I ask them, “If all things were equal, would you rather have 90 percent of all the money I have in the world, or 1 percent of all the money Mr. Perot over here has?” When they give the obvious answer, I say, “But why? 90 percent is so much higher than 1 percent!”
They get the picture.
So, let’s say you’re exercising at a fairly low intensity that burns 100 calories in a half-hour. Let’s say that 70 percent of those calories come from fat. Your neighbor, however, is working out much harder…outside the magical “fat burning” zone. She’s burning up, say 300 calories in that same half hour, but only 50 percent of those calories are from fat.
Now do the math.
You’re burning a higher percentage of fat, but 70 percent of your 100 calories equals 70 fat calories burned. Your neighbor, on the other hand, is burning a lower percentage of fat, but she has burned up 50 percent of 300 calories, or 150 fat calories…more than twice what you’ve burned in the same period of time!
And THAT is exactly why the style of cardio training that I recommend is far superior than the “typical” cardio you see legions of people doing across health clubs in America. My clients burn 4 times more calories in the same amount of time as the average cardio session.
Think about that for a minute… That’s Twice the Results in Half the Time!
Get it? Not yet? Well, let’s cut to the chase. Who in their right mind honestly believes that working slower will yield a higher rate of return? If that was the case, then laying on the couch would yield better results than exercising in the first place! If that was remotely true, we would not see so many obese people walking the streets. But, over 65% of Americans are overweight or obese.
Now…isn’t it worth understanding the numbers?
