How to Torch Body Fat Using a Heart Rate Monitor

When it comes to weight loss, the first thing that many people think about is that they have hours and hours of cardio. Many people spend too many hours counting calories burned on a treadmill or elliptical machine. Others use heart rate monitors to stay in their fat burning zone for hours hoping they'll burn.

One of the frustrations I often hear from customers is, "I do 5 hours on the treadmill every week and I can't lose a pound." But they lost something. The result is that with proper heart rate monitoring (HRM) training, one can optimize their workouts to improve their metabolism and burn more fat not only during your workout, but throughout the day.

To understand heart rate training, we must first understand how our bodies produce and use energy. We have two major processes that produce energy in our body. First, our aerobic metabolism uses oxygen combined with carbohydrates (sugar) and fat to produce our long-lasting energy and the energy you use to read this article.

The second way to produce energy is anaerobic. Your anaerobic metabolism generates energy for a short period of time from intense activity. Your single source of energy for your anaerobic metabolism is either carbohydrates in your bloodstream (blood glucose) or carbohydrates stored in your muscle cells (glycogen). So aerobics burn fat and carbohydrates, and only burn anaerobic carbohydrates.

Proper heart rate training has three different exercise zones each designed to challenge your metabolism for faster, more efficient digestion that results in burning more fat. Most people just exercise in one of them. When we train in the same zone every day, our bodies adapt to that exercise and we stop gaining weight and afterwards. To optimize your fat burning results, we want to do exercises every zone once a week.

To create the optimum fat rate zone, we need to find your anaerobic threshold. Your anaerobic threshold is the point at which your physical activity is so strong that your body cannot produce enough aerobic energy.

Your anaerobic metabolism begins to generate more energy to continue activity. During intense cardio exercise both aerobic and anaerobic metabolism produces energy to keep you moving. If you have the ability, the best test for your anaerobic threshold is a treadmill test where you are connected to an oxygen mask connected to a metabolic car. I recommend doing a web search to find out where you can get this done in your area of ​​residence.

Fat Burning Zone 1

The first zone (zone 1) for optimal fat burning cardio consists of working at moderate intensity. You want to exercise with intensity that you can have for a long time, over 30 minutes. consistently. With exercise, it is good to work with a consistent cardiovascular workout for 60 minutes. The goal in zone 1 is to train your body to burn fat efficiently. Don't worry too much about how many calories you burn during a workout. Proper fat burning zone exercises train your metabolism to burn more fat by training your body to efficiently release more fat from your fat cells throughout the day when you are not exercising.

Anaerobic Threshold Zone 2

For the second zone (zone 2), we wanted to train as close as we could to the anaerobic threshold. The step to finding this point is the highest heart rate you can get in 15-20 minutes. The goal of zone 2 is to train your aerobic metabolism to burn energy as quickly as possible. Your metabolism is then adjusted and you burn more energy 24 hours a day. Zone two is the exercise I see that every player skips. Most people either spend their time in the easy zone 1 or do high intensity exercises all the time that we are going to talk about next. Working at high intensity in zone 2 is essential to training our aerobic metabolism which is our main source of energy throughout the day.

High Intensity Zone 3

The third zone for optimum fat burning cardio is high intensity training (zone 3). Another name for this zone is interval training. Interval training is where we work out for a short period of time, 1-3 minutes, and then walk or rest for a short break, and then repeat the high order down again. Zone 3 exercises train your body to produce more energy than it has ever done in the short term.

More important is the rate of energy burning than the amount of calories. This means that the faster you go, the more calories you burn in a short time. One key to interval training is that you need to repeat the same speed and heart rate for each interval. Often people train too hard for the first interval and even though their heart rate increases, they slow down their pace with each interval. Zone 3 exercises are considered the most effective way to increase metabolism and burn more fat. You actually burn 100% of carbohydrates (sugar) during training as a source of energy. People who do regular weekly interval training burn more fat 24 hours a day, even on their off-days.

Each zone has a major aspect to your overall fat burning program. Optimal programs consist of training in all three zones weekly. Each person's pulse rate will be different for each zone. Heart rate zones between people can vary by more than 20 beats, so training in your friend zone doesn't work. Start training in all three zones each week and start burning more fat 24 hours a day.

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