ideal heart rate - does it matter that much?

CaitlinR85

Thanks popalud, that article was very interesting.

I'm really glad to hear that I can have effective fat-burning in the higher zones. Like others here, I can't stand working out in the 60-70% zone.

machinegunkate

interesting! boomp to read later.

ninerbuff

I'm interested in losing weight, and in toning up a bit; but my primary concern on the elliptical machine is just to make my calories burned count go up as high as possible.

When I use the heart rate monitors on the machines, usually I'm in the 170 - 180 bpm range. According to the ranges on the machine, this puts me outside of the "cardiovascular" zone and well out of the "fat burning" zone. However, if I slowed down enough to get my heart rate down where it should be, I feel like I'd have to work out twice as long to burn as many calories.

I'm a reasonably healthy person; I can maintain around 170 bpm for close to an hour fairly comfortably, and my resting heart rate is very low. I don't get faint or dizzy or anything. But if I'm to believe these machines, then my heart rate is way too high-- is this something I should be concerned about? Will burning at a faster rate like this somehow hurt my weight loss efforts or my body in any way?

It's about TOTAL CALORIES BURNED. Don't fret over the "zones". Bust your *kitten* and burn as much as you can.

A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

nahralynn

bump for later.

ninerbuff

Let me make this easy for everyone: You burn more fat at REST than any exercise you can do in an hour. Your RMR is the rate your body uses calories at rest. Those calories are from fat and most people are well over 1000 calories a day for RMR. So what's your best bet? RAISE YOUR RMR. That's NOT going to happen through steady state cardio. The body has to be INTENSELY trained and that will usually be ANAEROBIC exercise. Heavy weight lifting, HIIT, Tabata Protocol, etc. are INTENSE training and all raise RMR.

A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

DL121004

Don't get too hung up about the differential between the fat-burning zone and the aerobic zone with regards to burning fat. Here's why.

In the fat-burning zone, 80% comes from fat.

In the aerobic zone, 50% comes from fat.

But those are *percentages*, not amounts. As people have noted, you'll burn more Cals in a given time in the aerobic zone, so you may be burning both more Cals and either the same or more Fat Cals.

An example is in order.

Say for the sake of discussion that you burn 500 Cals over a period of time in the fat-burning zone, but 800 in the aerobic zone.

In the fat-burning zone, 80%, or 400, Cals burned will be from fat, 100 Cals from glycogen.
In the aerobic zone, 50%, or 400, Cals burned will be from fat, 400 Cals from glycogen.

Note that well! Under either scenario, your fat Cals are the same, but total Cals are higher in the aerobic zone.

Granted, I made up those numbers. :bigsmile: The point is this: test yourself to see how many Cals you burn under either scenario for a set period of time. You'll then be able to compute your "fat Cals" breakeven point. My example was purposely made easy. Let me provide one a little more complex.

Under this example, assume the same burn of 500 Cals over a period of time in the fat-burning zone, but instead of 800 in the aerobic zone. the number is 700.

Doing the math for fat Cals only:

fat-burning zone: 400 Cals
aerobic zone: 350 Cals

So, to get the same fat Cals burned, you'd have to workout about 14% longer in the aerobic zone (700 * 1.14 = ~800 Cals).

...

Realize that, as you become more fit, you should see an improvement in your heart rate. What this means is that you will need to exercise harder in order to maintain your heart rate at a given level. For those who have an issue with not feeling challenged by the fat-burning zone, this is something that can be looked forward to.

....

The fat-burning zone is probably most useful for endurance athletes: folks who run marathons or ride their bikes 100 miles, as this zone more efficiently utilizes the body's stores of fat for energy during those endurance events, leading to a reduced (not eliminated) need for reliance on fueling during the performance.

As a caveat to the above, this is less true for professionals (on one hand) as they are likely to be performing at a higher intensity than the fat-burning zone. On the other hand, these folks tend to be incredibly fit, so what is fat-burning to them may be aerobic to you.

...

Another issue that comes in to play is that of exercise-induced eating and "eating your exercise Calories". Exercise-induced eating is the phenomenon of tending to eat more when more active. This is the body refueling. It appears that this behavior is minimized when utilizing more fat stores. With the MFP basis of eating your Calories, the emphasis with exercise is fitness, not weight loss per se.

...

Having said all this (and there are simplifications for the purpose of...well, simplicity), at the end of the day, given a Caloric intake, what matters is total Calories burned.

...

Sorry for the wordiness, and as stated, there are simplifications made, but I hope it has been helpful.

Elizadolots

Can't see the wood from the trees sometimes. :ohwell:

pukekolive

So DL21004, this is why, as a 270lb female working hard regularly in my aerobic zone that I probably lose my appetite in the few hours following my workouts?

I find that it is quite difficult to eat even my allocated calories, never mind my exercise calories, when I have worked out regularly during the week. This is probably also a good reason for a rest day, to get my appetite back.

This phenomenon occurred before a few years ago when I was regularly swimming (albeit not as vigorously as some people) for 50 lengths x 3 times a week - I lost 5 stone in 6 months which I felt was too fast but I was forcing myself to eat as I had no appetite.

deedog007

bump

DL121004

So DL21004, this is why, as a 270lb female working hard regularly in my aerobic zone that I probably lose my appetite in the few hours following my workouts?

I find that it is quite difficult to eat even my allocated calories, never mind my exercise calories, when I have worked out regularly during the week. This is probably also a good reason for a rest day, to get my appetite back.

This phenomenon occurred before a few years ago when I was regularly swimming (albeit not as vigorously as some people) for 50 lengths x 3 times a week - I lost 5 stone in 6 months which I felt was too fast but I was forcing myself to eat as I had no appetite.

It does get complicated.

As I recall, aerobic exercise also has an appetite suppressing effect due to the release of ghrelin and maybe more.

My hunger isn't quite so predictable, but as an anecdote, I have found that personally, I can ride my bike (my exercise of choice) for up to about two hours without it impacting my hunger at all; if I ride four or more hours, I want to eat anything not nailed down.

yayam28

So I'm trying to figure out what's the best thing to be doing so that since I'm working at it, I might as well get the most "bang for my buck".

If I work out for 45 minutes in the "Fitness Zone" and burn 450 cals, 382 of those are from fat....I can live with that :-) But I also know that if I workout for 45 minutes in the "Aerobic Zone" and burn 680 cals, 340 of those would be from fat. If I'm working harder and burning more calories (and the net difference is only 42 calories from fat) what's the advantage to staying in the "Fitness Zone" vs "Aerobic Zone"? Don't I want to burn more calories...especially if there is such a slight difference in how many are from fat?

Perhaps this is something that's supposed to be intuitive, and I'm missing it?? :blushing: I can't seem to wrap my head around why I need to be so hung up on whether I'm burning 50% or 85% of my calories from fat. Any info to shed light on this would be appreciated :-)

Thanks

yayam28

If I had finished reading the posts before asking my question I wouldn't have needed to ask :blushing: Guess my fingers were faster than my brain (again)

DL121004

Perhaps this is something that's supposed to be intuitive, and I'm missing it?? :blushing: I can't seem to wrap my head around why I need to be so hung up on whether I'm burning 50% or 85% of my calories from fat. Any info to shed light on this would be appreciated

Simple answer: You shouldn't be.

fteale

When I run my HR is always 168-180 for 60-70 mins. I haven't had problems burning fat with that.

DL121004

When I run my HR is always 168-180 for 60-70 mins. I haven't had problems burning fat with that.

Right, and that's what I was getting at in my above posts.

The only real reasons that I can think of off the top of my head for most to work out in the fat-burning zone is that they either aren't fit enough to work at a higher rate, or they are endurance athletes training for that purpose.

For pure weight loss, just focus on burning Cals when doing your cardio.

pukekolive

As I said I am very heavy at 270lbs and have a resting heartbeat (lying in bed) of between 51 and 60. I regularly work out between 125 (easy), thru 135 (moderate) and if I want more of a sweat up around 145.

When I am walking a mile as fast as I can for fitness measuring reasons I go up as far as 160 for short periods without feeling ill effects.

Doing some cardio at high levels as part of a fitness plan is also great for heart -health and stamina and as the old saying goes 'gets the blood moving'. We all also know the increased endorphin benefits that a great burn brings!

I am walking for cardio at the moment as I am so unfit and follow a plan to increase my fitness - I have taken 6 1/2 minutes off the time it takes me to walk 1 kilometre just since late December 2011. My heartbeat recovery rate has also improved tremendously during that time.

I attribute this increase in performance to using a heart rate monitor as part of my fitness equipment.

Meggles63

When I run my HR is always 168-180 for 60-70 mins. I haven't had problems burning fat with that.

Right, and that's what I was getting at in my above posts.

The only real reasons that I can think of off the top of my head for most to work out in the fat-burning zone is that they either aren't fit enough to work at a higher rate, or they are endurance athletes training for that purpose.

For pure weight loss, just focus on burning Cals when doing your cardio.

^^^This! Keep it easy and simple and it works!

durangocal

Thanks for all the info! Was dreading the thought of having to go slow on the machine. I've always hated the fact that when I check my heart rate I am in the red zone as if I am doing something wrong-I always knew I was in the anaerobic zone but now that I have a better understanding of it bring on the RED! My weight loss thus far has been steady so I guess I shouldn't have second guessed myself although I left heavy as well so was wondering if the lifting was the reason for my weight loss. Again thanks for the great info!

furbutt

Yes! Before I was using my HRM MFP was calculating my burn at 100 cals per minute when it was truly only 70. So for a 10 mile run MFP had me at 1000 cals burned ( so needing 2100 calories) when truly the burn was 700 (as tracked by my HRM) add that up over a week and it is an extra 2000 calories not burned that I thought were!

2fit4fat

Bump