Exercise

Your Heart Rate Zone to Burn Fat

August 29, 2009
By J White

As many of you know, working out at certain heart rate zone is a proven method to quickly burn fat. It doesn’t matter whether your motivation is to look great in that two piece bikini or to not feel embarrassed about taking off your shirt at the beach, exercising at your ideal heart rate zone will help you get the most out of each drop of sweat.

The big question for most is what is my targer heart rate zone. But before getting into how to determine your ideal heat rate zone for burning fat, a overview of your overall cardiovascular system and energy buring is in order to understand why this heart rate zone is so important.

Your heart rate is just one component in your cardiovascular system whose primary purpose is to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the cells. Other functions of the system includes transporting deoxygenated blood, removing metabolic waste produced from the tissues, maintaining fluid balance to prevent dehydration and maintaining body temperature by absorbing and redistributing heat.

All of those processes require energy to perform. This energy source comes from a compound know as adenosine triphosphate or ATP.&nbsp During any type of physical activity, the body relies on a continuous supply of ATP. The immediate source of ATP comes from the supply stored inside the muscles of your body.

However, this stored ATP only last enough for a few seconds of activity. Therefore, more ATP must be furthered manufactured and this manufacturing is accomplished through the breakdown of carbohydrates into the form of glycogen and glucose inside the muscle. This breakdown of carbs is enough to supply you additional few minutes of ATP and is an oxygen-free process know as anaerobic metabolism.

For continued movement lasting more than a few minutes, ATP must be refilled at a higher capacity for energy production. This is where a combination of carbs and fat with the assistance of oxygen is used to produce your energy source of ATP. This process is know as aerobic metabolism.

Before you can get to the aerobic metabolism stage where fat is used to help produce the energy source ATP, you must use the ATP stored in your muscle and the ATP processed from the carbs stored in your muscle. How much time will this take? Unfortunately this is not an easy question to answer. Experts disagree on how log it takes to reach this point. Some say 5 to 10 minutes or more.

What’s important about this information is that it gives you an better understanding of how your target heart rate plays an important part in your fat loss. The anaerobic metabolism is primarily used in activities that require short burst of energy such as power lifting and sprints whereas aerobic metabolism is required in activities designed to last for longer periods of time such as jogging and bike riding.

The actual determination of your heart rate zone for aerobic metabolism depends on a your maximum heart rate. The maxmum heart is based on an estimate using the formula 220 – age. From this value, experts recommend that you exercise at a rate between 60% to 80% of your maximum heart rate. So for a 30 year old, that would be 220 – 30 = 190. 60% and 80% of this value would be 114 and 152 beats per minute.

Even though this is a widely accepted manner to determine your maximum heart rate, keep in mind that this value varies from individual to individual. A more accurate way of determining your maximum heart rate is to get with a personal trainer or fitness professional and have them perform a stress test.

Knowing these values, you can now workout with more confidence knowing that it you stay within this zone you’re burning the most fat possible at the quickest rate. Also be sure to eat an adequate amount of carbs before your starting your exercise routine. If you don’t, your body will start using protein from your muscles to fuel the process. You want to maintain your lean mass as it is another source for burning fat.

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