You may have heard about special “fat-burning” workouts that draw exclusively from your fat stores and speed your weight loss. Runners are often told that running at a lower intensity will burn more fat than running faster. That’s true, but incomplete and misleading. Here’s the deal: When you’re sitting in a chair, you’re burning almost nothing but fat.
As your activity level increases, your muscles start to burn glycogen, which is how your body stores most of the carbohydrates that you eat. Glycogen is your muscles’ preferred fuel source for exercise. The harder you work out toward a maximal effort, the percentage of the calories burned from glycogen increases, and the percentage that comes from fat decreases. When you’re sprinting all out, you’re burning no fat at all.
Based on that information, some people will say to work out at a very easy pace to burn more fat. Technically, that’s true. But as the previous example shows, if you want to do nothing but burn fat, sit down. You’ll be burning almost nothing else!
What matters is not where the calories come from that you burn, but how many you burn. As I said, whether you walk or run, you burn about 100 calories per mile. So if you walk three miles, you’ll burn 300 calories, and more of those calories will come from your fat stores than if you run three miles. But think about the time involved.
Walking three miles is going to take close to an hour for most people. In the same amount of time, you could probably run twice as far. The result? You’ll have burned twice as many calories, and that’s what matters in taking and keeping the pounds off.
That’s why running is so great for losing weight. In just half an hour, you can burn as many calories as you would doing many other exercises for an hour or more. Running’s convenience and the short time each day that you need to allot for it mean that it’s easy to do regularly, meaning that you’re more likely to burn more calories more often.
As your activity level increases, your muscles start to burn glycogen, which is how your body stores most of the carbohydrates that you eat. Glycogen is your muscles’ preferred fuel source for exercise. The harder you work out toward a maximal effort, the percentage of the calories burned from glycogen increases, and the percentage that comes from fat decreases. When you’re sprinting all out, you’re burning no fat at all.
Based on that information, some people will say to work out at a very easy pace to burn more fat. Technically, that’s true. But as the previous example shows, if you want to do nothing but burn fat, sit down. You’ll be burning almost nothing else!
What matters is not where the calories come from that you burn, but how many you burn. As I said, whether you walk or run, you burn about 100 calories per mile. So if you walk three miles, you’ll burn 300 calories, and more of those calories will come from your fat stores than if you run three miles. But think about the time involved.
Walking three miles is going to take close to an hour for most people. In the same amount of time, you could probably run twice as far. The result? You’ll have burned twice as many calories, and that’s what matters in taking and keeping the pounds off.
That’s why running is so great for losing weight. In just half an hour, you can burn as many calories as you would doing many other exercises for an hour or more. Running’s convenience and the short time each day that you need to allot for it mean that it’s easy to do regularly, meaning that you’re more likely to burn more calories more often.
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