Fat Burning Cardio Zone Myth

One of the biggest weight loss myths involves the legendary fat burning cardio zone. So many people believe in this nonsense, but exercising in the fat burning zone is almost a complete waste of time if you want to lose weight.

First, let me tell you about the completely misunderstood fat burning zone. Science shows that when you do cardio exercise at a low-intensity (typically about 60% of your maximum aerobic output), you burn a high proportion of fat than when you exercise harder.

So that sounds great, right? Based on that information, you should be doing low intensity cardio in the fat burning zone to burn fat. But hold on!

Here抯 the problem. If you exercised for 30 minutes with low intensity cardio (at 60% of your maximum performance), you抣l burn about 250 calories. Let抯 say 80% of those calories are from fat, so you抎 burn 200 fat calories.

However, if you did hard cardio for 30 minutes (at 80% of your maximum performance), you could burn close to 400 calories. Let抯 say only 60% of those calories were from fat, but you抎 still burn 240 fat calories.

So with high intensity cardio, not only do you burn more calories in the same amount of time, but you also burn more fat. There抯 no question that low-intensity cardio is not the best fat burning workout.

Plus, there is even more bad news. Weight loss isn抰 just about simple calories burned during a cardio workout. That抯 the same as saying you can eat 2000 calories of sugar and 2000 calories of whole, natural foods and you抣l lose the same amount of weight. Because that is not true. It抯 not that simple for fat burning nutrition, and it抯 not that simple for fat burning cardio.

New research compared high-intensity cardio against the low-intensity cardio fat burning zone. In this study, subjects exercised until they burned 400 calories. Obviously, the higher intensity cardio group exercised for a shorter time, because they burned more calories per minute.

However, what抯 really important is that after weeks and weeks of doing this, only the high-intensity cardio group was able to burn belly fat. The low-intensity exercise group did not lose weight or get any fat burning benefits. Amazingly, even though the two groups both burned 400 calories, the fat burning cardio zone group did not burn fat!

Here抯 even more bad news. A research study from Australia compared low intensity fat burning cardio against interval training. In this study, the 20-minute interval training program helped subjects burn belly fat, but the 40-minute slow cardio training program did not cause fat loss.

Those are two major studies that show calorie burning from low intensity cardio is a waste of time. No results despite hours and hours of exercise. What a shame!

That is why interval training workouts do not rely on the fat burning cardio zone to get results. You get more fat loss results in less workout time with interval training.

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