Fat Burn Heart Rate
When it comes to exercise and losing weight, you should be aware of your heart rate and how it affects fat burn. Depending on the intensity of your activity, your body’s fuel requirement will vary.
Before we look at the different heart rate zones we need to find out a few things. One of which is your maximum heart rate (MHR).
This number can be found a number of ways depending on the source of your information, but an accurate and widely accepted formula to use is:
205.8 – (0.685 x your age)
Once you have that number, the next bit of information you need is your resting heart rate (RHR). That number is simply found by checking your heart rate or pulse first thing in the morning (before your morning cup of coffee).
Click Here for Detailed Fat Burn Heart Rate Training Info
Using these two numbers (resting heart rate and maximum heart rate), you can determine where your heart rate should be for a given zone of training. The heart rate training zones are based on a percentage of your heart rate reserve. Take the percentage listed for a particular zone and input it into this equation:
(MHR-RHR) x zone percentage + RHR
So a 35 year old man with a resting heart rate of 70 beats per minute will compute as follows for recovery zone training:
(180-70)*.6 + 70
110* .6 + 70
66 + 70
136 beats per minute
The heart rate zones are as follows:
60-70% Recovery zone – Improves the ability of your heart to pump blood and improve the muscles’ ability to utilize oxygen.
70-80% Aerobic zone – The most effective for overall cardiovascular fitness. Increases your cardio-respiratory capacity, which is the ability to transport oxygenated blood to the muscle cells and carbon dioxide away from the cells. Also effective for increasing overall muscle strength.
80-90% Anaerobic zone – The point at which the body cannot remove lactic acid as quickly as it is produced is called the lactate threshold or anaerobic threshold. Training in this zone helps to increase the lactate threshold, which improves performance. Training in this zone is hard: your muscles are tired, your breathing is heavy.
90-100% VO2 Max/Red Line zone – You should only train in this zone if you’re very fit, and only for very short periods of time. Lactic acid develops quickly as you are operating in oxygen debt to the muscles. The value of training in this zone is you can increase your fast twitch muscle fibers which increase speed.
You will notice that there is NO fat burn heart rate zone listed. That is because the idea is based on a common misunderstanding of the scientific information behind the body’s use of energy. The idea is that if you run or do cardio more slowly you will burn a higher percentage of fat during your exercise. There is some truth to that. While operating up to and including the recovery zone your body will utilize most of the energy being burned from fat stores.
Unfortunately, while in this zone you are not burning a significant number of calories. In fact, while you are sitting there reading this information right now, you are burning the highest percentage of body fat, but how much area you really burning? Exactly. Not much at all.
During a typical cardio session in a recovery heart rate you can reasonably expect to burn approximately 300 calories. In this zone your body is burning about 85% of its fuel from fat. This is good.
During a typical cardio session in an aerobic heart rate you can reasonably expect to burn more calories than you did in recovery simply because you are working harder. We’ll say 500 calories burned in a regular aerobic session. In this zone your body drops its fuel from fat percentage down to about 50%. The rest comes from carbohydrates and a small degree of proteins. This doesn’t sound good if we’re talking about fat burn though right?
Let’s look closer at the numbers and what is really happening:
Recovery – 300 calories burned, 85% fat burn = 255 fat calories burned
Aerobic – 500 calories burned, 50% fat burn = 250 fat calories burned
Your total fat calorie burn is essentially the same. The real difference is the total calories you burn in each session for the same amount of time. Compare each of the activities for 3 days a week over four weeks and you have 3600 calories burned off in a month for recovery zone training versus 6000 calories burned in that same month for aerobic zone training.
When it’s all said and done what matters is how many calories you burned off in relation to how many you ate. Do yourself a huge favor and forget the fat burn heart rate myth and put forth the effort you know you need in order to see the results you are after.
There is a LOT more that you need to know to make the kind of changes you seek!
This guide will give you the details you need without leaving you feeling like you are studying to become a fitness trainer. Click here to start burning fat the right way at the correct heart rate.