I was mooching around online and came across YET ANOTHER ‘fat burning zone’ article.
I know I’ve taken time to talk on this before but it is a topic that will be doing the rounds again right now with people wanting to magically reinvigorate their training at home while the gyms are shut.
Firstly, thousands of people who used to attend mainstream gyms didn’t achieve anyway. Self Training as an individual statistically yields around a 25% to 30% success rate, training with another takes you to around 50% because you have a sense of accountability to the other person. PT statistically brings a 70% success rate.
I physically don’t understand how the people in the self training category, or the train with a friend category expect to achieve at home, doing the wrong stuff when they can’t achieve in a purpose built facility doing mostly the wrong stuff.
As a Personal Trainer I’m astounded that so many industry pros still waffle about pointless ineffective practices.
Welcome, ‘The Fat Burning Zone’.
While it is widely understood that there are heart rate intensities which burn more fat as a percentage than other heart rate intensities, it isn’t the most effective way to lose weight. FACT.
This is because losing weight comes down to burning calories on the whole not just fat, despite levels of body fat being taken into account for body composition analysis.
A higher percentage of fat is being burned by our bodies at the lower intensities. This means that the lower the HR, the higher the percentage of fat being burned BUT, the low HR isn’t intense enough to burn high amounts of calories and therefore isn’t effective for losing weight.
This fat burning zone is just a bullsh*t entity companies have piggybacked on because of the whole ‘don’t lose weight lose fat’ argument we’ve fought for years. The science underpinning this statement is basically that the lower the HR the more fat as a percentage you’re burning. If this was the case how can we be staring down the barrel of obesity as a society? More and more people are moving into a more sedentary lifestyle due to occupations becoming less laborious, less active and less physical. If there was any clout behind the effectiveness of the fat burning zone for weight loss our nation would actually be shaping up together, combined with a sedentary lifestyle and I’m sure we are all in agreement that this is not the case!
I recently spoke about keeping things simple and getting in to zones and their suitability for one goal or another will only complicate things if your goal is to lose weight, take it from me!
One thing I will say and it is simple. Get out of the fat burning zone, and get the fat burning zone out of you! It isn’t the place to be to lose weight.
I know this sounds like a rant, but its only to save you precious time, as ‘not having time’ is one of the biggest barriers to training. Don’t waste the time you do have on tin pot ineffective practices that will leave you further away from your goal in the long run.
This heart rate zone will keep coming up, and being spoke about and I’ll keep saying its crap, ineffective and best avoided for everyones sake! Don’t believe the hype.
As ever at Body Planners, we want to help people like you make training simple, effective and fun whether you’re in the zone or not!
Jake
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