Maybe it’s your workout I-N-T-E-N-S-I-T-Y!

For all the time, energy and effort people are putting into their workouts they should be getting better results.  Most people who exercise and can’t understand why they are not losing weight and adding tone to their body, need to look at their workout intensity.

As we have learned about stress and diet and how various hormones trigger our body to burn or store fat.  We need to ask the same question when we workout, does your workout trigger your body to burn fats, proteins or carbohydrates.  Remember, the key to losing weight and keeping it off is burning calories from stored body fat.  When the machine you finished exercising on says you burned 300 calories, it doesn’t tell you if you burned those calories from carbohydrates, proteins or fats.

Let’s start with the basics, aerobic and anaerobic exercise.  Common aerobic exercise is walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, aerobic dance.  Anaerobic exercise is weight training, sprinting, downhill skiing, speed skating.  When you exercise your body will breakdown calories to produce energy, if you’re trying to lose weight and burn-off body fat it is important that your workouts trigger the breakdown of fats for energy.  

           Aerobic exercise                                           Anaerobic exercise

            With oxygen                                                    Without oxygen

            Burns fats                                                        Burns carbohydrates and proteins

Low to moderate intensity                             High intensity

            Long duration                                                  Short duration

            Reduces stress                                               Increases stress

The reason most people aren’t getting the results from their workouts is because they are doing their aerobic exercise at too high an intensity (they walk, jog, etc…too fast), which triggers anaerobic metabolism.  Please understand, just because you did aerobic exercise doesn’t mean your triggered aerobic metabolism, because aerobic metabolism is when your body breaks down calories from fats for energy.  Remember, aerobic means with oxygen, if there is no oxygen available because you are walking, jogging, swimming etc to fast your body will be forced to burn calories and produce energy by burning calories from proteins and carbohydrates not fats.

So the next question is, how high of an intensity can we train at and still breakdown calories from fats and not carbohydrates?  What we’re talking about now is your ‘aerobic capacity’ or fat burning zone.  Using a heart rate monitor is so important when you do your aerobic training, because it will monitor the intensity of your workout. 

The biggest problem is that most people think they can do aerobic exercise at 80-85% of their maximum heart rate, when in fact only well conditioned marathoners and triathletes can train at that intensity level.  Everyone else should train around 70% of their maximum heart rate or below to ensure fat burning.

To learn more about exercise, diet and stress and how it triggers your hormones to burn or store fat, read “To Burn or Not to Burn, Fat is the Question!”

Dr. Len Lopez