Do you have to SWEAT to burn fat!?

carrierella

Under "exercise" in MFP, nearly anything can be counted.

A friend of mine told me that unless you're breaking a sweat and nearly faint AND have been working out a full half hour, you won't lose fat.

True?

False?

Carrie

carrierella

Under "exercise" in MFP, nearly anything can be counted.

A friend of mine told me that unless you're breaking a sweat and nearly faint AND have been working out a full half hour, you won't lose fat.

True?

False?

Carrie

wanderinglight

Ha...when I quickly read the topic I thought it said "Do you have to SWEAR to burn fat" and I was going to respond with HELL YES! I swear every time I get on that damn elliptical!!!

...and then I realized I read it wrong. I'm such a dork.

I'm sure there are people out there who can answer this more thoroughly than I can, but I do know that the most important thing is to get your heart rate up and keep it up for a certain amount of time.

neverbeenskinny

So to put it simply, just because you sweat doesn't mean that you're burning fat. But then again, just because you are burning fat doesn't mean that you have to sweat.

You sweat because your body temperature has risen to the point to where your body feels that it needs to cool down by sweating "turning on your internal air conditioner", so sweating really doesn't have anything to do with burning fat, you lose water when you sweat, not fat. The best thing to do to make sure that you're burning fat is work within your target heart rate. But if you work too hard and you go above the target heart rate you could be burning glycogen, not fat. It's a delicate balance.

Below is the link to a post that explains where your heart rate needs to be to burn fat. Be sure that you stay within your target heart rate zone of 50 to 70% with 60 - 70 % as the optimal target heart rate to burn fat.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/9197--s-about-heart-rate

xmimikinsx

I think your friend is wrong. If you choose to walk to the shop instead of drive then you'll be burning calories, yes it may only be 40kcal or something but it is something.

Moreover, for optimum fat burning it's best to keep your heart rate between 70 and 80 when exercising (which when you're doing it won't feel like you're killing yourself) but it's alot better than going at it like crazy.

If you want more explanation type heart rate monitor into google and it shall reveal all.

Maybe your friend needs a lesson in fat burning :-)

banks1850

This is harder to answer then it seems. xmimi is correct in her HRmax ranges.

we burn a lower ratio of fat at lower heart rates, but the flip side is, you can work out much longer at lower heart rates. There is a place for lower intensity workouts though. For those who are not yet in good enough shape to work out at higher HR percentages for extended periods, lower heart rates can help improve endurance, while working off some excess fat. The principle fact remains, raising your heart rate at all will burn fat, it may not burn as much fat, but it still burns fat. The down side is you receive very little muscle building from low intensity workouts. And moving towards the future, muscle is what will KEEP you thinner. Muscle burns 6 calories per day per pound of muscle, fat burns 2, so if you put on 20 lbs of muscle and take off 20 lbs of fat, you have not only increased your health, you have also allowed 80 extra calories a day of healthy caloric intake without loosing a lb, besides which, that muscle will help with staying in the higher heart rate zone longer (and looks much better!)