Burning The Fat : Part I

Posted on | April 9, 2009 |

cardio

Whether I am at the pool or I’ve just finished working out with my shirt off, I get asked all the time, “how do you have such little fat on your body?” “How do you get your abs to show off so much?” I wish I could say it’s genetics, but it’s not. It’s a lot of hard, sweat drenched workouts, along with a pretty clean, decent diet.

The basic rule of thumb when trying to burn fat is:

You are what you eat!.

You need to eat to supplement your workouts by eating a lot, but you need to eat the right stuff and stay away from bad things that leave an accumulation of fat. If you eat too much, and you don’t work out enough, you gain weight. If you don’t eat enough, but use more energy, the body not only burns stored fat and carbohydrates, but also essential proteins. This causes the body to eat itself, which is what happens when you starve yourself. That is something you want to avoid if you plan on building muscle or maintaining what you have.

So what do you do?
Target your Fat Burning Zone.

True or false? The human body burns a large percentage of fat at a slow pace.

The answer: maybe.

The Fat Burning Zone is considered to work best at low intensity speeds, but that really doesn’t seem right, does it? Yes, you burn more fat by going slowly, but it all breaks down to how much energy you spend in total. High intensity short bursts at faster speeds help increase calories used as well as calories of fat burned.

Part II will explain how building muscle plays a part in burning fat.

Category: Fat Loss, Cardio, Cross Fit & High Intensity Training
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