I’m trying to lose some weight and get in better shape for a hiking trip this fall. I’d been exercising about as hard as I could, an hour on a bike in the 160-170 zone, plus some treadmill and stairclimber if I had extra time, and not losing a pound. Someone in a pit thread said that anyone drenched in sweat (and after an hour like that, I’d be soaked) was probably doing it wrong. So recently I changed. I’ve been trying to stay in the 130-140 range, about halfway between the fat burn and cardio levels on the chart, and I’ve lost 5 pounds. I thought I was on to something.
Now, after reading this thread, I don’t know what the hell is going on.
I don’t have a cite, but I think the balance of hormones does change in cardio vs fat-burn intensities and gives different long-term results. It’s like how lifting heavy for a few reps increases muscle mass, but lifting light for many reps increases muscle tone. Perhaps boosting metabolism long-term is like having muscle tone.
3 to 6 hours? Pretty much impossible to achieve unless you do it as a job or go on a day-long hike. But the type of feeling you get after that is very different than after jogging for an hour (namely, a deep calming tiredness vs edgy exhaustion), and I’m inclined to believe there’s real differences in the physiological effects as well.
I thought this was something of a myth, in that muscle “tone” doesn’t really exist, it’s just a product of the size of the muscle vs the amount of fat around it.
Glucose/Glycogen(the end result of all carb intake) is more accessible. It’s a short six carbon chain floating around in your blood just waiting to be mobilized. You just split it in half(glycolysis) and its ready to go. Triglycerides, the stuff that makes love handles, is a much larger and complex molecule. It takes longer to mobilize for energy use. I like this quick summary if you’re curious.
No. It comes down to one equation(inequality for the nitpickers:)) calories in vs calories out. They should put this on the machines.
If calories in > calories out you are consuming more calories than you burn. You are in a calorie surplus and will gain body fat(excess calories from all sources…fat, carbs, protein, alcohol…are all converted to triglycerides and stored as fat in your adipose cells)
If calories out > calories in you are burning more calories than you consume. You are in a calorie deficit and will lose body fat.
Physiologically it doesn’t matter how you burn your calories. It all balances out. If you are in a calorie deficit you will lose body fat.
I may be an outlier, but I find myself hugging and huffing and puffing after a workout, but I’m hugging the machine.
I’ve been working out for a few weeks and I’m one of the aforementioned overweight, out-of-shape women, although I wasn’t studied.
The treadmills at my gym have automatic programs that factor in age, weight and heart rate, then adjust the speed and slope to get me to my target and keep me there. I also do 30 minutes of cardio and another 30 minutes of fat-burning. For whatever reason, I don’t get sore and I feel better if I do that, probably because the aerobic exercise takes care of the crud and helps me wind down.
My considered opinion (and apparently, that of the trainer at my gym) is that, for those of us who are just getting started, any movement is good, so long as we push ourselves and keep doing it. Some of us also have joint pain that tends to be exacerbated by certain kinds of stress, but this generally goes away with weight loss. So for some of us, fat-burning vs. cardio is largely academic.
One medical study I read that found no difference in weight loss between high intensity exercisers and low intensity exercisers hypothised that the high intensity exercisers were adding muscle, which offset some of the weight lost through fat loss. Maybe that’s what happened with you–you weren’t losing weight because you were adding muscle. Still, so long as you’re happy with your current results, no reason to switch.
I’m don’t sure why they thought you were doing it wrong if you were sweating, but I’m not sure I buy that. I think that if you aren’t sweating, you aren’t working hard enough for your body to upshift into high performance mode.
Pure anecdote, but I once tried training for a triathlon using the advice of a personal trainer at the gym who said something similar about slow and steady was better, how sweating was a sign you were ‘overworking’ your muscles, ect. Worst time I’ve ever turned in was that race. I had plenty of stamina, but my overall ‘get up and go’ seemed so weak. Next race, I was back to sweating out hours on cardio machines and in the pool, and I finished as well as I usually would.
Diet fads and cardio machine HR charts notwithstanding, it can’t be any simpler than it was put a few posts ago. Kcal in vs Kcal out. Your body either has more energy than it needs, or it needs more than it has.
There’s two parts to the weight equation: How much you burn and how much you eat. I’m guessing you burned around 600-700 calories during that workout. That’s a lot, but eating a little extra with meals and a snack or two will negate that.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m hungrier after working out strenuously compared to working out easier. I don’t think it’s because of the additional calories burned over the same time. Even a short, strenuous workout can make me feel starving while a very long easy workout will have an almost negligible effect on my hunger. My guess is the glycogen replacement produces something that makes me really hungry. If I don’t deplete my glycogen stores, I don’t feel the same hunger. So it could be that you felt hungrier after your strenuous workout and subconsciously ate more.
One additional thing is to stay away from energy bars and drinks if you’re working out for weight loss. They should be used only if you are training for performance reasons, like working on speed or distance. Otherwise, the calories in those things just negate the calories you burned in the workout.
My understanding is that strenuous exercise uses glycogen as the primary energy source. Since glycogen is the energy used by the brain, a massive reduction in glycogen stores would result in the brain telling you that you are hungry and should eat.
Less strenuous exercise, where you are burning a good amount of fat directly, will have much less an impact on glycogen stores, and thus you wont necessarily feel the same desire to hoard every edible thing in sight.
Of course, the terms ‘less’ and ‘strenuous’ are relative.
Exactly! The body’s high performance mode is one thing. But you’re trying to get your normal mode better, aren’t you? It’s not unreasonable to think they’re separate things.
Exactly
:rolleyes: Economists. So you think she gained 5 pounds of muscle?
You might want to make sure you know what you’re talking about before you go using that rollseyes smiley again. For example, the average muscle gain from a high-intensity aerobic exercise program for twelve untrained, moderately overfat, weight-stable women was 4.3 pounds in this medical study, so 5 pounds is perfectly reasonable.
Also, SenorBeef was correct, and your earlier post about muscle tone was completely wrong as well, as could be verified by spending 15 seconds on wikipedia.
It was a pit thread a few weeks ago; complaints about people with bad habits at the gym. Someone said that if you’re leaving a puddle behind after you work out, you’re probably trying too hard. (Paraphrased for brevity and humor.) After an hour, I could take my t-shirt off and wring it out. And I was just up to change things around a bit.
It doesn’t feel like I’m eating any less now, but I don’t track it closely enough to be sure. It used to be about 550 calories in an hour (according to the counter on the bike, anyway). Last night I did two hours at 140-145 BPM and was a little over 600 calories.
I’m very curious. Just having new things to test and seeing what the results are will help keep me motivated.
I would think that without any sort of qualification on how long said exercise was being done - simply gauging overexertion based on how much sweat is left behind is rife with inaccuracies.
I have a friend who sweats. A lot. In the middle of a New England winter. Without a jacket on. While simply walking.
Thats an extreme example - but the point is this - people sweat differently. Not everyone sweats when their internal temperature reaches exactly (for example) 98.7 degrees F.
Plus - I know that for me - in a gym I sweat profusely at low intensity. Just the stale and sedentary air is enough.
This actually rbings up a subtle point that I heard about (not on this message board, but from a triathlete’s blog). Changing up your routine is good, for multiple reasons. One is simple mental variety. Second, if you always exercise the same thing, same intensity, day in and day out - you’re body gets so damn efficient that you dont burn near as many calories as you did when you were first starting out. Thirdly - an effect of being so efficient is that you plateau and it takes a long time, seemingly forever, to break off the plateau. It’s called the grey zone - that exercise intensity where, gosh darnit that felt like a good, solid work out! But exercising in that zone all the time is too fast to allow full recovery of muscle tissue, but not fast enough to break down muscle and cells to be rebuilt stronger.
So changing things around a bit, such as in interval training, helps keep the calories being burnt as well as provide faster improvement.
My own anecdote that proves this to me is that I ran for 2-3 years, same thing, 2-3 times a week. Had a hell of a time getting below 9 min/mile for more then about 3 miles.
Last year I started training for a half marathon and followed an actual program with slow runs, speed work, intervals, etc. After only 2 months, I ran a half marathon with an average pace of 8:40/mile. Obviously not a speed demon - but being able to sustain a speed faster than I had before, and sustain that speed for 10 extra miles (plus the fact that the last 3 miles I was actually doing more like 8 min/miles) - is enough to prove the point to me.
To add another layer of complexity to this thread, my understanding was that a mix of high and low intensity cardio (High Intensity Interval Training) was the most effective way to lose fat. There doesn’t seem to be a universal standard for HIIT - I’ve seen anywhere from 10 seconds at max intensity, 20 seconds active recovery to 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off.
The HIIT Wikipedia page has links to some studies as well as some claims about HIIT that I’m not well-equipped to judge the validity of, but here is a quick summary (edited to remove footnotes and cited studies but they’re available on the Wiki page).
I’m having trouble finding the studies right now, but when I did research into this a few months ago, I seem to recall the optimum HIIT ratio to be 6 seconds on 9 seconds recovery, or 8 seconds on, 12 seconds recovery. From my own experience, this is absolutely brutal if you do it to max intensity. I personally do 100m sprint, 100 m recovery, which ends up being more like 15-20 seconds on, 30-40 seconds recovery.
Factually, I don’t know for sure how effective HIIT is. There’s a lot of conflicting literature out there, but, from my own experience, it seems to be quite effective. At the very least, it’s a great way to vary the workout and it does wonders for your cardiovascular conditioning. I’ve found my steady state pace has rocketed since incorporating HIIT and regular intervals and fartleks (“speed play”) into my workouts.
