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DEL.ICIO.USWeight Loss and Fitness Myth #4: Aerobic Exercise Will Burn The Most Fat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I see frustrated women who spend 4 days a week, 40 minutes at a time, on the stair-stepper, treadmill or in an aerobics class who don’t lose weight! But they keep doing what they’re doing hoping that somehow what hasn’t worked in the past, will miraculously change their bodies in the future. I know men who run 6 miles a day who have no muscle tone and rolls of fat around their waists who hope the same thing. You’ve been led to believe that if you want to lose fat, all you have to do is regular aerobic exercise. There’s a lot more to it than that. No single piece of the puzzle works by it self.
You must monitor and control your cardiovascular intensity to maximize the number of calories you burn. And, if aerobic exercise is not synergistically applied with weight training to increase lean muscle mass, and supportive nutrition you cannot effectively accelerate the fat loss process. Each pound of lean muscle tissue burns 35-60 calories a day while your body is at rest. So, put 5 new pounds of muscle on your body, and you can burn up to 300 more calories in the next 24 hours than you do right now. Whereas body fat is not metabolically active, and just makes you look fat.
Therefore, a combination of properly monitored aerobic exercise, resistance training and supportive nutrition enables you to rapidly burn the maximum amount of fat. Even if you’re a triathlete or marathon runner, you have to eat the right combinations of foods and include weight training. Working with aerobic athletes for years, they are astounded not just in the development of how they look, but how they perform.
As it is said in a military cadence, “you can run all day, you can run all night, you can run, run, run into a fire fight.” When you are running to lose fat, that’s all you’ll be doing- is fighting. No amount of running can make you stronger or improve muscle tone. As a matter of fact, it can cause you to get weaker and decrease your metabolism if you do too much of it. You’re body will canabalize muscle (an abundant source of protein) when you deplete yourself of muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrate energy in the muscle). So you see, too much of good thing can be bad. Like with all things in life, you need a balance. When it comes to losing fat, you must include resistance training and maintain proper eating habits. Aerobic exercise alone is not the answer.
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By Jeff
June 19, 2006 12:24 PM | Link to this
I see the same thing in the gym. People who work with weights and never do a bit of cardio and people who treadmill for an hour and never lift a weight. They also never look any different from day to day either.
I do a LIGHT 20 min cardio, without bumping my heart rate above 70% max, followed by 10 minutes of stretching. Then depending on what areas of the body I’m targeting, 30 to 60 minutes of lifting (free & machine) followed by a SOLID 30 minute of high intensity cardio (like a 1200 foot climb at 5mph on the treadmill for example).
Giving up “bad stuff” to eat (anything with refined sugar, white flour, trans fat, “useless carbs”, etc) and eating 6 small meals (what can fit on your hand is a small meal) along with 8hrs of sleep has allowed me to drop 100 lbs and 14 inches off the waist.
I’m not stopping either. Fitness is a journey, not a destination.