The "Fat-burning" Zone

ShoShoyi

I want to avoid losing muscle mass during my weightloss journey; how should I go about doing this? I heard from many that eating the adequate amount of calories seem to be the major thing and to figure out TDEE-20% for daily calorie consumption but who figured out that 20% is the most amount of fat we can burn daily? Why not 500-750 calories? Does it matter what method we use to burn those calorie so that we're only incinerating fat? I ask this because we often see on treadmills the "cardio zone" and the "fat burning zone." What if we burned 750-1000 calories in the fat burning zone (while eating, let's say 1200-1500 calories). Would we still lose muscle mass from that too?

xrowdac

U need more protein intake and top up with exercise to build mass while u lose ur weight.. :-)

AJ_G

I want to avoid losing muscle mass during my weightloss journey; how should I go about doing this? I heard from many that eating the adequate amount of calories seem to be the major thing and to figure out TDEE-20% for daily calorie consumption but who figured out that 20% is the most amount of fat we can burn daily? Why not 500-750 calories? Does it matter what method we use to burn those calorie so that we're only incinerating fat? I ask this because we often see on treadmills the "cardio zone" and the "fat burning zone." What if we burned 750-1000 calories in the fat burning zone (while eating, let's say 1200-1500 calories). Would we still lose muscle mass from that too?

No matter what, if you are eating at a deficit, you will lose fat AND you will lose muscle. The amount of muscle you lose is determined by the size of your calorie deficit, your protein intake, and whether or not you are lifting heavy. If your calorie deficit is small, you are consuming adequate protein, and you are lifting heavy weights to failure, you will lose a minimum amount of muscle while you are losing weight. The bigger your calorie deficit, the higher percentage of your weight loss will be muscle mass. If you don't do any heavy weight lifting, you will lose much more muscle mass than if you lift weights. If you don't consume enough protein, you will not have enough amino acid availability in the blood stream for muscle synthesis and you will lose muscle mass. The "fat-burning" zone and the "cardio zone" on machines are ridiculous. It is true that at a lower intensity, you do burn a higher percentage of calories through fat oxidation, but if you train at a higher intensity, you will lose a higher number of calories total, and a higher number of calories from fat oxidation, but the percentage of calories burned from fat oxidation will be lower. Moral of the story, do cardio at higher intensities.