Health and Fitness

For all the time, energy and effort people are putting into their workouts, a lot of people aren't getting the results they should. Maybe it could be the intensity of their workout, more specifically the intensity of your aerobic workout. Too often people perform their aerobic workout at too high of an intensity, which triggers their body to burn lean muscle instead of stored body fat.

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, carbohydrates or lean muscle, which is the last thing we want to be burning. Remember, the key to losing weight and keeping it off is burning calories from stored body fat. The stair-stepper, treadmill, exercise bike or whatever you trained on may say you burned 300 calories, but it doesn't tell you if you burned those calories from the breakdown of carbohydrates, fats or worse lean muscle.

Let's start with some basics about aerobic and anaerobic exercise and their differences.

Common aerobic exercise is walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, aerobic dance, etc. 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

* With oxygen

* Burns calories from fats

* Low to moderate intensity

* Long duration

* Reduces stress on the body

Anaerobic Exercise

* Without oxygen

* Burns carbohydrates and proteins (lean muscle)

* High intensity

* Short duration

* Increases stress on the body

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). This triggers anaerobic metabolism. Please understand, just because you did aerobic exercise doesn't mean your triggered aerobic metabolism.

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 from proteins (lean muscle) and carbohydrates not fats. This is because there is No oxygen available and your body is forced to produce energy by burning carbs and lean muscle. So if you are doing aerobic exercise and your breathing heavy or out of breath - that's a good sign you are triggering anaerobic metabolism, which is OK if that is what you are looking to do. Unfortunately most people are attempting to trigger aerobic metabolism.

So the next question is, how high of an intensity can you 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 thing to remember is that everyone's 'aerobic threshold' is different. You can't based it solely on age. You have to look at level of conditioning, body weight, etc.

Two people jogging at the same speed may think they are both triggering aerobic metabolism. But if one is a few pounds heavier, or older or less conditioned...one of them may be aerobic - and burning fats. The other may be triggering anaerobic metabolism and burning lean muscle.

The biggest problem is that most people think they can do aerobic exercise at 80-85% of their maximum heart rate. Only well conditioned marathoners and tri-athletes can train at that intensity level and still be burning fats. Everyone else should train around 70% of their maximum heart rate or below to ensure their metabolism is burning fats.

FYI...anaerobic, strength training should be done at high intensity!

To learn more about exercise, diet and stress and how it triggers your hormones to burn or store fat, I invite you to read a few of my articles on my website.

Who Would Have Thought That Eating MORE Would Flatten Your Belly?! Click here to find out more.

Dr Len Lopez is a nutrition and fitness expert and creator of the Work Horse Fitness Trainer. To learn more about health and fitness or test your metabolism and stress levels on my website.