any truth behind this?

No

Don't let others dictate what exercise you do, any exercise is sufficient. Exercise you enjoy is the right choice.

One part of this advice is true, and that is to change the workout. Your body might have gotten used to the moves of your current wourkout routine. I would advise you to keep intensity level the same (or higher) but change up what you do for 2 weeks, then go back to the old routine.
Yes it is true that you will burn more calories at 120 HR, but you will not have any after burn. What people forget is that when you do exercise at the higher HR you usually have bigger after burn, making it all together burning more calories.
tldr; don't lower you HR, but you can switch out your routine

GsKiki wrote: »

One part of this advice is true, and that is to change the workout. Your body might have gotten used to the moves of your current wourkout routine. I would advise you to keep intensity level the same (or higher) but change up what you do for 2 weeks, then go back to the old routine.
Yes it is true that you will burn more calories at 120 HR, but you will not have any after burn. What people forget is that when you do exercise at the higher HR you usually have bigger after burn, making it all together burning more calories.
tldr; don't lower you HR, but you can switch out your routine

There is so much wrong with this post I don't know where to start......

The OP's lack of weight loss has nothing to do with her body "getting used to" a workout but, I suspect, the fact she's not eating at a deficit (she doesn't mention whether or not she'd logging her food in the post) and do some reading on EPOC (BTW, she would not burn more calories at 120bpm, she would burn a higher proportion of fat but fewer calories).

OP, are you logging your food intake? Are you taking measurements? You mention not losing any weight for weeks.... and the only reasons this would happen are not eating at a deficit or putting on muscle (which is difficult to do to any extent if you're eating at a deficit). Ignore the whole idea of the "fat burning zone" it has no relevance in the context of weight loss but could be important if you were training for endurance sports (even skinny marathoners carry more fuel by way of fat than they do with stored glycogen)

Yet another myth that has some roots in reality. In the "fat burning zone" you burn a larger percentage of fat than carbs. If for some reason you truly care about fast vs carb calories burned then get out your calculator. At a 60:45 fat to carb split you will burn more total fat calories doing HIIT if you burn 34% more total calories vs low intensity.

200 low intensity calories burns 120 fat calories
268 (34% more) HIIT calories burns 121 fat calories.

500 low intensity calories burns 300 fat calories
670 (34% more) HIIT calories burns 302 fat calories.

All of this is moot anyway since your fat to carb ratio changes constantly with heart rate and for the most part a good HIIT session would burn enough additional total calories in the same time period to burn more fat calories.

Long story short, keep doing your HIIT.

Edit: Above post says the said the same thing as I was messing around with the calculator.

What drachfit posted.

The only other thing I can think of is mixing/misinterpreting an advanced training method for endurance adaptation. This normally involves expending one's muscle glycogen stores targeting the two muscle types on separate days to increase the activity of PGC-1α (Baar et al., 2002; Pilegaard et al., 2000, 2003), a protein that has been called the master regulator of increased mitochondria and blood vessels, and other partners to increase transcription (production) of genes that ultimately lead to more mitochondria (Wu et al., 1999) and blood vessels. Mitochondria is your cells powerhouse and the more you have the more work you can do and at a higher intensity. The goal is to maximize power/velocity at lactate threshold since this is the best determinant of endurance performance (Coyle, 1999). It goes something like this: day one and two is high intensity work to burn off Type II muscle glycogen stores followed by low but high volume work on day three to tax Type I muscle glycogen stores. Carbohydrate consumption is keep low doing the “adaptive” session.

I'm more familiar with cycling workouts: high intensity is at or just below your anaerobic threshold (in reference to maximal aerobic power), or the onset of blood lactate accumulation, for 40-60 minutes or more (accumulated duration with intervals) while low/high volume work is something like 2.5-6 hours at 40-60% of your anaerobic threshold. It has been a staple of cycling for a long time (was exposed to it in the late 80s) although the likely mechanism was not known until research caught up.

I wouldn't recommend doing this type of training unless you have build up a sufficient base and are fairly fit (e.g. upper rung amateur competitor level).

leahcollett1 wrote: »

hi everyone

so ive been told that i need to tone down my intensive body combat 4 times a week and swap it for walking as i burn more fat from having my heart rate at 120 than say intensive at 160-165 bpm. on my hrm? this is to result in starting to lose again following weeks of no losses.
is there any truth behind this? i do go some when i do combat as its high impact and i read anywhere between 140-170 depending my effort.

Weight loss can plateau, just be patient. Also, re-evaluate your nutrition and make sure you're eating enough to support your goal. IF an issue exists, it's most likely in your nutrition and not in your exercise selection. If you're only goal is to lose weight, exercise preference doesn't matter much.