CARDIO EXERCISE
More and more people are trying every fad diet and diet supplement or pill on the market in an effort to lose body fat and maintain a healthier body weight. What so many fail to realize is that they wouldn’t have to be so strict with their nutritional intake if they would exercise more. The main reason that we are so overweight as a nation is that we don’t move enough, plain and simple. We have become lazy. Too many people spend 8+ hours at work each day only to spend 3-4 more hours glued to the couch completely mesmerized by the TV. each night. Add to that 6-8 hours of sleep each night and that leaves barely 4 hours each day to be active.
There are many components to fitness to include in a well rounded exercise program. Muscle strength/endurance and flexibility are important factors but it is cardio exercise that will have the greatest effect in decreasing existing body fat stores. After obtaining your doctor’s permission, anyone interested in losing weight should include 3-4 cardio workouts each week to their routine.
Many personal trainers, fitness books and web sites recommend cardio workouts to be 20 minutes in length. Following this guideline will not help you achieve maximum results from your exercise program. In order to effectively utilize fat as the primary fuel source, cardio exercise should consist of at least 30 minutes of continuous movement. Here is why. When you begin to exercise, the majority of the energy used by the muscles comes from carbohydrate. You are burning calories just not the right ones. As your exercise duration increases the more your body will utilize fat for fuel and the less you will burn carbohydrates. You see, the aerobic energy system, which uses fat as its primary fuel source in the presence of oxygen, takes a long time to get going. The anaerobic energy system, which uses carbohydrate as its primary fuel source without the presence of oxygen, turns on very quickly. The immediate demand for energy is met by burning carbohydrates and the 20 minute mark is the point at which the emphasis switches over to the fat burning aerobic energy system. The longer you can exercise BEYOND the 20 minute mark the more body fat you will burn.
Another important consideration for your cardio exercise is determining the proper intensity level. For most people, monitoring your heart rate will be the simplest and most effective way to control exercise intensity. Remember that fat burning exercise is low-intensity, long duration activity. Exercising at too high a level will still burn calories and improve fitness but the calories burned will be mainly carbohydrate. If fat burning is your goal, slow and long is the way to go.
A simple way to measure exercise intensity is to calculate your maximum heart rate. This is done by subtracting your age from 220. Training zones can then be determined by taking percentages of this maximal number. The ideal range for fat burning exercise is to maintain 60-70 percent of your maximum heart rate. An inexpensive heart rate monitor can be purchased from any sporting goods store and will make tracking your heart rate quite easy.
Here is an example of putting the formula for maximal heart rate to work for a 50 year old individual:
220 - 50 = 170
170 = maximum heart rate
60 % of 170 = 102
70 % of 170 = 119
Fat Burning Workout Intensity = 102-119 beats per minute
If you do not have a heart rate monitor available you can measure your rate of perceived exertion. A low-intensity fat burning exercise will allow you to speak in full sentences while exercising. You may have to take an additional breath or two between sentences but you should be able to carry on a conversation. If you begin to speak in short, choppy sentences or lose the desire or ability to speak at all it probably means that you are exercising at too high a level and should decrease the intensity accordingly.
Remember that the other components of fitness will improve your overall health and should be included in your exercise program. Resistance exercise, in particular, will lend considerable help to your weight loss efforts by increasing lean body mass, which in turn, allows you to burn more calories at rest. Check out other links on this site for workouts to help increase your lean body mass. In the meantime, get your body moving and increase the amount of cardio exercise you get each week.
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