Easy weight loss guide. Page 4

Exercise intensity and fat burning. Your body burns fat (utilizes it as an energy source) better when it has enough of oxygen in your blood. This is a fact, and this fact created practice of exercising in so-called “fat burning zone” (usually at the lowest training heart rate) – when you exercise with low intensity (walking or slow jogging can be an example), it does not interrupt your breathing, your lungs deliver enough of oxygen into your blood and your body uses mostly body fat as a fuel. However, there is one big fault in such practice – fat burning stops as soon as you stop such exercise.

On another hand, any high intensity physical activity (weight lifting or sprinting can be an example), when your pulse increases dramatically and oxygen level in your blood drops, and your muscles works intensively in anaerobic manner, makes your body to use carbohydrates (blood sugar, or glycogen for example) as a main energy source. Basically, you hardly burn any fat at all during the exercise. However, high intensity physical activity or training triggers different mechanisms in your body which results in fat burning during the phase of recovery (simply during the rest time), long after you finish your activity. High intensity physical activity vs. “fat burning zone” is a long term fat burning after your training vs. immediate fat burning, but only during the time of exercise. As an example, you can do weights hard for about one hour or you can walk for 4-5 hours a day. There is no “good” or “bad” here. Both ways work, both ways can be effective. They simply work differently; however time-wisely high intensity physical activity is virtually more effective. Different combinations of both principles can be effective as well.