Saturday, November 10, 2012

Why running and some other cardio may not be the best for you burning fat

How are you guys? It's Friday November 10th and I decided to write a little article about my feeling on cardio. A lot of research shows that after 15 minutes of running you start burning through muscle or protein, what do you think? Is it true? Lets break it down. Figuring out how many calories your burning while running contains two different things how many calories your taking in, and how many calories your body is burning while your not running. You burn calories while your not exercising even if your just sitting around, the United States Department of Agriculture recommend that every adult eat 1,600-2,400 just to keep their energy going for the day. While your doing cardio, if your heart rate is between 50-80 this is considered the "fat burning" zone. When you increase the speed/intensity and your heart rate goes to 80-90 percent this is considered the "cardio zone" which is burning carbs, and only 15 percent body fat. That sounds good right? Burning all those carbs? Actually its really not good at all. Your body only has so many carbs from what you ate prior to your workout. Once your body runs out of carbs to burn (because carbs are considered energy for the body) it starts burning your MUSCLE which is bad. It starts burning your muscle and your proteins because it NEEDS that energy to keep going through the workout your putting your body through. Another crazy thing, if you do lets just say 90 minutes of cardio a day because you REALLY want to burn that fat, you think it will work right? Actually its going to burn what you want to KEEP vs. what you want to lose. Your body will basically be confused at that point and not know you want to burn fat, it will just think your overworking yourself. It will end up burning the muscle and NOT the fat because muscle uses a lot more calories to live than fat does, so your body goes into "oh my god" mode and gets rid of whatever is going to use the most resources. Your body will slow its metabolism and will store all the fat, it goes into starvation mode because it assumes you are overworked and underfed. So if you do cardio really hard it will burn your muscle to save your vital fat stores. Ever wonder why heavy set people lose a lot of weight but keep all that loose skin? All that loose skin is actually 100 percent fat. That happened because they lost all the muscle that was there. My advice, you can do cardio and you can run.... But don't over due it and don't underfeed yourself because you will not reach your fitness goals that way.



Mikey's Fitness TIP: Whether your running in the cardio zone or the fat burn zone, your body primarily burns through fat or carbohydrates. According to the Mayo Clinic, if you run daily for extended periods of time, eating carb heavy meals three or four hours before you tain can help you with a maximum amount of energy. The crazy amount of carbohydrates can fuel your body enough to prevent the need to burn through protein calories toward the very end of the run.

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