Fat Burning and The Tortoise and The Hare

I am sure many of you will be familiar with Aesop's fable, The Tortoise and The Hare, but if you're not here's a quick recount of the fable.

A hare sees a tortoise travelling along a road and begins to mock him for moving so slowly. The hare challenges the tortoise to a race and the tortoise accepts. The race starts and the Hare dashes off in front leaving the tortoise moving much more slowly behind him. The hare is far ahead of the tortoise in the race and decides to take a rest, only to fall asleep under a tree. While he is sleeping the slowly moving tortoise passes him and wins the race. Upon waking up the hare realises he lost the race to a "slower" tortoise.

The moral of the fable; "slow and steady wins the race".

You're probably wondering what Aesop's fable has to do with fat burning. I see there are two very different attitudes to burning fat, the ways the Tortoise and the Hare would go about burning fat.

As in Aesop's fable, the Tortoise would burn fat by exercising at a slower but steady rate and the Hare would exercise in a higher intensity being finished much quicker, assuming there is no falling asleep before the finish line again!

If you have been training you will have heard of the fat burning zone.

Essentially, if you train at a lower intensity (60-75% of your maximum heart rate) you will burn more fat than training at a higher intensity.

From the table below that to a degree this is true. At a lower intensity your body takes more energy from it's fat stores than it's carbohydrate stores.

The tortoise will burn calories slowly and much of this energy will be supplied from his fat stores.

The hare sprints, all be it for a short time. He gets where he is going quickly with little thought of the fat burning zone.

Training like a Hare would mean completing High Intensity Interval training.

Working at a higher intensity (more than 75% of maximum heart rate) for a short period of time, normally no more than a minute with a slight rest between intervals. The rest periods are relatively short; however long enough to allow the next high intensity interval to be completed.

Working at a higher intensity burns a greater amount of calories per minute of exercise. From the table below it is evident that the more intense the workout, the more reliant the body is on it's carbohydrate stores.

You could be burning fat at a lower intensity, however if you consume too much food, excess carbohydrates will be stored as fat.

Weight loss is achieved by creating a calorie deficit. Essentially you consume less energy (or calories) that your body needs.

•Reducing Portion size
•Replacing high energy dense food with lower density foods (less fats, more protein and carbohydrates)

Portion size has gone out of control in the past decade, if you can move away from super size servings it will be easier to create your calorie deficit.

Fats contain 9 calories(kcal) per gram while protein and carbohydrates contain 4 calories(kcal) per gram. Reducing the amount of fat in your diet, particularly unsaturated fats and replacing them with protein or carbs will allow you to remain full while consuming less calories.

•Build more muscle
•Physical activity

Your Basal Metabolic Rate is the amount of calories your body requires to effectively stay alive. Your BMR is determined by your Lean muscle mass, and a few other factors such as age and height.

The more lean muscle you have, the more calories your body will require.

Simply bulking up will not cause you to lose a significant amount of weight, you will need to perform some degree of physical activity.

By exercising, or performing some other moderate to high intensity activity, you will create a greater energy requirement for your body.

From the above table you will see that with increased intensity, you have increased calorie burn (kcal/min).

Training at a higher intensity will burn the greatest number of calories in a given period of time.

In terms of weight loss a calorie burned is a calorie burned, regardless of whether it was supplied from carbohydrates or fat.

Many people do not and this is a reason many people use for being unable to train.

The fat burning zone has become so entrenched in the minds of gym goers, many believe that the tortoise approach is the best way to burn body fat.

There is a growing body of evidence that supports HIIT as a more effective fat burning routine.

If the calories burned are more important than the source of the energy supplied, you would be best to burn as many calories as you can in the time you have available.

This would present the more efficient fat burning scenario for many people who have a limited time available to exercise.