fat burn @ 60%... feels like Im hardly moving

I stay in my fat loss zone while on the exercise bike but turn up the resistance high. My heart rate stays lower but im dripping sweat and have jello legs by the time im done xD

I used to think this in the beginning. Yes your body will burn a higher % of fat than carbs at lower intensities but at higher intensities you burn more calories. The % of fat calories burned might be lower but you are still burning more fat calories overall.

HIITs are amazing. Check them out.

IMO HIIT works much better than the mysterious 'fat burning zone' check out http://www.intervaltraining.net/ if you need more into

Just an idea

definitely ease yourself into HIIT though. the intensity could be too much for people that are in less than optimal shape. try it out, see what you can handle, and then go from there.

i also suggest that if you are overweight or have a history of joint problems, heart problems in your family, or other health problems that can be negatively impacted by high intensity training, to go and get a physical done and talk to a doctor about it before beginning the program.

I get that...but consider this train of thought.....currently I do not eat back my calories ( I will when I get OUT of morbid obesity and closer to overweight) so I dont want to burn more calories...I really DO just wanna burn more fat......

If you keep up what you are doing, over the next month or two your exercise heart rate will go down considerably and you will have to expend a lot more effort in keeping it high.

Continue with what you are doing now as long as you are not injuring your legs. If they do not hurt then they are fine.

you can still probably do higher intensity even if you don't eat back your calories until you get to a really low body fat percentage. ask a doctor though. it is important for you to optimize your time and energy, so to me it makes more sense to up the intensity and decrease the time than to keep at a steady lower intensity for longer, especially if you are burning the same number of fat calories.

also, i'm not 100% sure on this since I haven't looked at the literature lately, but I think after you've done 20+ minutes of steady state cardio that you have used up most of your muscle glycogen stores and at that point you are burning almost purely fat anyways. so if you plan to do 40 minutes of exercise and you can handle the cardio zone for that long, then go ahead and do 40 minutes of cardio. you are burning a LOT MORE fat from 20-40 minutes.

Here's something I've posted before, but speaks to the zones issue:

High Intensity sessions - just as good!

The implication from all this research is that if you wish to burn maximum amounts of fat then you should train in the 68 to 79% MHR window. The reality is that if you train at higher intensities you can burn just as much fat.

If you cycled along at 50% VO2max, fat would provide about 50% of the energy you needed to keep going. If you cycle along at 75% VO2max, fat would provide 33% of the required calories. Thus, the slower workout sounds better from the fat breakdown perspective - or does it?

A moderately fit athlete exercising at 50% VO2max generally consumes about 220 Calories during a 30 minute workout. If the same athlete works out at 75% VO2max, 330 Calories are burned during the same period. Of course, 50% of 220 Calories and 33% of 330 Calories yield an identical number of calories coming from fat - 110 Calories.


http://www.brianmac.co.uk/fatburn.htm

I had the same questions and I have a monitor that tells you how much time of your workout was fat burning and I get that working at hi intensity burns more calories overall but I did 72 min today and only 9 min were fat burning 736 calories total for the full 72 min would working slower in the fat burn zone result in more quality calories burned even if a lower amount?

Funny, I was just writing a chapter in my new manual re: the fat loss zones last night. Here's what I've got (no, i haven't proofed it yet so go easy on me...):

"The Not-So-Simple Math Behind Rapid Fat Loss

Okay, grab your calculator and let’s look at what you are currently doing to get your body wedding ready and how you can save yourself a ton of time and drop dress sizes rapidly.

If you’ve been on any cardio equipment in the last 20 years you’ve probably seen the chart below (or some variation of it).

**Sorry, no pic yet ;-( **

Basically what this chart tells you is a complete lie and I’m going to prove it to you.

According to this cart, the lower your heart rate (intensity) the more fat you are burning, and the higher your heart rate (intensity) the less fat you are burning, right?

Now you can call me a skeptic here, but I’ve seen a ton of fat people walking at low intensity/heart rates and plenty of elite level athletes with great bodies sprinting at 100% intensity. Doesn’t that go against the chart that we’ve all been told to believe?

But I guess that’s just an observation so let’s get down to the numbers and the reality of the situation.

The first thing that you need to know about the chart is that it correlates the heart rate with the percentage of calories burned coming from fat. In other words, in the “Fat Burning Zone” you are not burning a ton of calories but 75% of those calories are coming from fat while in the “Cardio Zone” you are burning significantly more calories but maybe only 50% of them are coming from fat.

Let’s look at an example to clarify the myth of the Fat Burning Zone.

Workout A – Fat Burning Zone (Low Intensity)

Total Exercise Time - 60 Minutes
Total Calories Burned – 300

Assuming that you spent the entire hour in the fat burning zone you would have burned 225 calories from fat and 75 from carbs.

Workout B – Cardio Zone (High Intensity)

Total Exercise Time - 30 Minutes
Total Calories Burned – 500

Assuming that you spent the entire 30 minutes in the Cardio Zone you would have burned 250 calories from fat and 250 calories from carbs.

So just looking at the actual time spent exercising you burned an extra 200 calories overall and 25 extra fat calories in half the time with workout B. But it doesn’t end there!

There is a really cool phenomenon called Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (or EPOC for short). Basically, this means that your body will continue to require an elevated amount of oxygen and therefore burn more fat than usual while bringing your body back down to its resting state.

Now let’s take a look at workouts A & B again.

In workout A you are working at a low intensity which means that it doesn’t take very long for your body to return to its resting metabolism so you are not going to burn a whole lot more fat after your workout.

However, in workout B you are taking your body to a very high intensity meaning that it will take several hours to bring your body back to resting metabolism. This means that you will be burning more fat for several hours after you have finished your workout. How cool is that!

Keep in mind that you spend the vast majority of your day not exercising so why not work to have the effects of your exercise last as long as possible.