I have always been under the impression the more calories you burn the more weight you burn. The treadmill at my gym has a “fat burn” setting, the thing is the fat burn only keeps my heartbeat at about 112ish. I can keep up over 160 BPM for a half hour, wouldn’t this be more effective in loosing weight, or does a lower heartbeat somehow make me loose more body fat?
You could drop an “o” simply by lifting a dictionary.
ZING!
higher heart rate = more calories burned
I know we’re going to have a lot of fitness experts come in here, so I’ll just tell you what worked for me: Read labels, and keep track of everything you eat, then burn more calories than you take in. The iPhone has a great app called Lose It!, that I use to track everything I eat (restaurant food, fast food, etc.). It creates a calorie defecit that seems to work for me. It also can track sodium intake, fat, etc.
As far as the treadmill is concerned, the higher the heart rate, the more calories burned. The “fat burn” setting usually represents something like 70% of your target heart rate (at least on my treadmill) and is designed to focus on burning calories first, and building muscle mass second.
Hope this helps…
The “fat burning” heart rate is a myth. All it means is that at that level of effort, the majority of the calories burned are from fat. However, you can burn more total calories by working harder/faster.
Example: Run 20 min. at f.b. HR, cover 2.25 miles-burn 250cal(will vary by gender, weight, etc-illustration purposes only)
Run at a training pace-cover 3.15 miles in the same time-burn 350cal. Less fat is burned at the higher rate but you have a larger total caloric deficit for the day which is what really counts.
On the other hand, “push yourself to run beyond what you are really capable of, so that tomorrow you physically can’t run and the next day you look for any excuse not to” burns the least calories of all. The opposite is true as well: if a routine is so easy that it seems pointless, even if it is burning calories, or if it bores you, you are more likely to skip it entirely the next day than if a routine leaves you feeling ten feet tall and bullet proof.
Fantastic. 
I was going to suggest undoing his belt and shaking it all around.
You mention running for 30 minutes. I have a similar time available to run most days. But remember the best weight loss strategy is keeping motivated - I think having multiple goals is a good factor in this. If one week your weight doesn’t drop but your running improves then you still accomplished something.
What has been working for me (since I started a few months ago) is to run a 5K on the treadmill. When I first started running 4 months ago it took me about 28-29 minutes to do this, but now my best time is just under 24 minutes. With my new ‘extra’ time sometimes I’ll run 6K and still keep it around the 30 minute mark. Other days I’ll do 5 minutes of weights.
The 5K is a great motivator as it is getting me thinking about entering some races. I can compare my 24 minute time to past race results and know I won’t be running with the top pack - but I’m motivated to keep trying to get there.
So in answer to your question, ignore the fat burning setting and just run in a way that motivates YOU beyond worrying solely on losing weight.
Well, if you can run for an hour with a slightly lower heart rate, that’s better than running for 20 mins and exhausting yourself.
You’ll have a better hour (more calories burned) with the lower heart rate.
Don’t even bother with the those treadmill graphs.
A lot of the minutia is for elite athletes. For the rest: Just do it. Eat less, exercise more and fine tune later. Seriously… since the battle is mostly mental, don’t waste a brain cell on such minutia.
That. For me, keeping a detailed food log has been the most helpful. The simple act of writing everything down makes keeping calories in check much, much easier than I thought it would be. There are a number of free food journal apps on the web and whatnot.
But, if you’re right, it also means you have a higher exertion. If you run at fat burn pace instead until you lose 350 calories, you’ll have lost the same amount of calories without having to work as hard. If you push yourself to your limit at fat burn pace, you’ll lose more calories than if you push yourself to your limit at training pace.
That’s if you’re right about there genuinely being such a difference between the proportionate number of calories burned at “fat burn” pace as opposed to “training” pace. Does anyone know if there really is?
Why does a slower heartrate burn more “fat” calories as opposed to the other kind? Should I just pick the faster pace I am comfortable with while being able to hold it at least 30 min
I don’t understand this ‘fat’ calorie stuff either.
From here:
“At its most basic, if we eat exactly the number of calories that we burn and if we’re only talking about weight, the answer is no – a calorie is a calorie. A protein calorie is no different from a fat calorie – they are simply units of energy. As long as you burn what you eat, you will maintain your weight; and as long as you burn more than you eat, you’ll lose weight.”
What difference does it make if you just ate 100 cals of beef jerky or 100 cals of butter. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. You burn more than you eat and you’ll lose weight.
The people on my running forum say that you run to get fit; you diet to lose weight. Now, some people will take issue with the term “diet” but the point is that you can exercise like a motherfucker and still not lose any weight if you’re continuing to consume more (or as many) calories than you burn. The key to weight loss is in calorie restriction. You have to monitor what you’re eating and make sure it’s less than what you’re burning. There are a lot of different strategies and techniques for putting this into practice, and you have to find something that works for you, but that’s how you do it in a nutshell.
I exercise almost all day long and consume a ton of calories. Still, I never advise people to look to exercise for losing weight. It’s just too easy to consume the calories used up in exercise in seconds of eating. Meanwhile, if a person starts counting the calories in, even if inaccurate at first, the weight begins to fall off. When you are counting, you tend to notice those things that are outrageously high in calories. You begin to drop those in favor of higher bulk lower caloric items. Gradually you can change your lifestyle and the weight it gone.
But I’m not advising against exercise either. I say, “Take a half hour walk ten minutes before dinner.”
The OP is discussing fat metabolism–the body burning it’s own stored energy. The idea behind the “fat burning” zone is that in that range your body is most likely to reach to its fat stores to make up a calorie deficit (as opposed to burning muscle or whatever).
That said, there is a difference between 100 calories of broccoli and 100 calories of butter: for me, at least, the former leaves me sated and the later is forgotten as quickly as it is consumed. Other people find concentrated fats to be very sating and a great way to control consumption
At a certain level of effort, your body is getting energy by burning fat. It’s a slow, steady, long term process and one that your body uses for long periods of modest effort. At a greater level of effort you burn carbohydrates. If you push beyond that level of effort, your body goes anaerobic and uses up sugars without oxygen. That is only for short bursts of effort.
So, the difference between burning fat and burning carbs is often where people mark the “fat-burning” vs “cardio” work.
Get your eating habits under control.
It’s true you will lose weight if you burn more calories than you consume, but this doesn’t automatically mean exercise. You burn a number of calories simply by going about your daily routine. Consume fewer calories than this number, and you will lose weight. That’s how I’ve lost 40 pounds in six months.
Exercise can be added to your routine, but it shouldn’t be used to compensate for bad eating habits. If you make poor eating decisions, that’s what you need to address. Realize that it’s much more effective and easier to stop yourself from eating 300 calories or make a 150 calorie compromise than it is to exercise off 300 calories.
Furthermore, keep in mind that anything you make part of your weight loss routine will need to be maintained to some degree if you want to keep the weight off. So if you make exercise a part of your weight loss routine but you don’t plan on exercising after the weight is gone, you will see the weight return.