Fat burning

In article <[email hidden]>,

Just A User said:

I have been using the "calorie burned" function of my hrm for the last
couple of rides. And I just read something on trifuel.com about fat
burning. According to that site it's counterproductive to workout
without adding carbs during your workout. They also state that fat
"burns" in a "carbohydrate flame" not sure I understand that
one.

You can read a lot of nonsense on the web... However, I think I get the
point they are trying to make.

Quoted message said:

So I
guess the question is assuming that I don't load up on calories with a
heavy breakfast (normal breakfast before a ride 1 cup of coffee with
cream and sugar and a bagel with cream cheese) and I ride moderately for
2 hours ( hrm calculates based on activity, age, sex and weight ) hrm
says I burned about 1644 calories.

I wouldn't put too much faith in those numbers. It's just a guess.

Quoted message said:

So after I burn the calories from the
breakfast how long until my body starts to use stored fat as fuel?

That's not how it works. Complex carbs take a long time to make
it from the digestive tract to something muscles can
use. Generally, you're running today on the fuel you ate
yesterday. Even simple sugars take an hour or more to get out
of the gut...

There is no "fat burning" magic pace or workout. Calories In <
Calories Out is all that works in the long run. The way to expend
the most calories is to ride as far as possible. (i.e long slow
distance ). If you eat while riding you'll ride longer and if
you're smart about what you eat you'll eat less calories than you
expend.

Your muscles store glycogen for about 2hrs of hard effort ( more
or less) and your body tends to run on that rather than
converting fat to energy ( but some of that happens all the time
anyway). So in general you won't start "running on fat" until
you make a dent in your muscle's glycogen stores. One way to do
that is not eat, the other way is to ride for a long time. My
personal experience in going up/down the same 20lbs over the last
20 years is that you don't really start to lose weight on a bike
until you start doing rides of over two hrs length. Of course you
can't do that everyday, but one long ride (4-5hrs) a week is within the
reach of most people. On rides of that length you need to eat and
drink to avoid trashing yourself for the rest of the week. For
rides of under two hours, mostly what you need is just water and
maybe some electrolytes( sodium, potassium ) on a really hot day.

_ Booker C. Bense

Just A User said:

I have been using the "calorie burned" function of my hrm for the last
couple of rides. And I just read something on trifuel.com about fat
burning. According to that site it's counterproductive to workout
without adding carbs during your workout. They also state that fat
"burns" in a "carbohydrate flame" not sure I understand that one. So I
guess the question is assuming that I don't load up on calories with a
heavy breakfast (normal breakfast before a ride 1 cup of coffee with
cream and sugar and a bagel with cream cheese) and I ride moderately for
2 hours ( hrm calculates based on activity, age, sex and weight ) hrm
says I burned about 1644 calories. So after I burn the calories from the
breakfast how long until my body starts to use stored fat as fuel?

Your body has 2 sources of fuel. Carbohydrate stored as glycogen in
your muscles and liver, and fat stored all over the place. Your body
uses a combination of the two at all times. The ratio of how much of
each type is used depends on the intensity of the exercise. Low
intensity exercise might be 60% carbo 40% fat. Very high intensity
exercise might be 95% carbo 5% fat. With training these percentages
will shift toward a more favorable fat buring percentage.

Weight-loss comes from buring more than you eat. I know it's harder
than it sounds, but that's basically it. The trick is to find some way
to get yourself to do it. Loading up with a big breakfast for a 2 hour
ride doesn't sound like a good idea to me. The bagel sounds fine.

I lost a bunch of weight, and I found that with lots of moderate
effort exercise I was no more hungry than if I just sat around all
day. This made keeping my calorie intake easy to keep in check. If I
exercised hard, I was much more hungry and I had to eat more and this
was hard to regulate. Your milage may vary!

My advice for weight loss is to do a few minor adjustements to your
diet to eliminate the easy uneccesary calories (butter on sandwiches,
chocolate sauce on the ice cream, etc) and to exercise as much as you
can in terms of hours at moderate intensity. IMO lots of people set
themselves up for failure by trying to do drastic diet changes and
high intensity exercise at the same time.

Good luck and have fun!

Joseph

Quoted message said:

Your body has 2 sources of fuel. Carbohydrate stored as glycogen in
your muscles and liver, and fat stored all over the place. Your body
uses a combination of the two at all times. The ratio of how much of
each type is used depends on the intensity of the exercise. Low
intensity exercise might be 60% carbo 40% fat. Very high intensity
exercise might be 95% carbo 5% fat. With training these percentages
will shift toward a more favorable fat buring percentage.

Something I've had to point out to people who show me those
tables where, at heartrate X, they are burning 70% fat
while at heartbeat X+Y, they are only burning 40% fat,
is that, even according to their own table, at heartrate X+Y,
they are burning much more fat per hour than at X.
(I heard this a lot when that walking fad was popular.)

In other words, I wouldn't steer people trying to lose
weight away from high intensity workouts. In fact, my
experience (of watching other people) is that they
can't tip the scales to where "out > in" unless/until
they workout hard.

Road Dog said:

Quoted message said:

Your body has 2 sources of fuel. Carbohydrate stored as glycogen in
your muscles and liver, and fat stored all over the place. Your body
uses a combination of the two at all times. The ratio of how much of
each type is used depends on the intensity of the exercise. Low
intensity exercise might be 60% carbo 40% fat. Very high intensity
exercise might be 95% carbo 5% fat. With training these percentages
will shift toward a more favorable fat buring percentage.

Something I've had to point out to people who show me those
tables where, at heartrate X, they are burning 70% fat
while at heartbeat X+Y, they are only burning 40% fat,
is that, even according to their own table, at heartrate X+Y,
they are burning much more fat per hour than at X.
(I heard this a lot when that walking fad was popular.)

In other words, I wouldn't steer people trying to lose
weight away from high intensity workouts. In fact, my
experience (of watching other people) is that they
can't tip the scales to where "out > in" unless/until
they workout hard.

My problem was that with hard workouts I was overdoing it when I would
eat afterwards because I was so hungry. With hard workouts I was doing
in a way 3 steps forward then 2 back when I would overeat afterwards.
With moderate exercise it was like 2 steps forward, zero back. People
who are overweight have by definition a poor sense of when enough-is-
enough eating wise, so stimulating their appetite with vigorous
exercise might not be such a good idea. With good self discipline
maybe it will work fine, but if they had good self discipline maybe
they wouldn't be overweight in the first place!

As far as tipping the scales such that "out"<"in", my theory is that
most people who are overweight have a daily calorie surplus of only a
few hunded calories max. These few hundred can easily be eliminated
with minor changes in diet to get the intake-outake closer to in
balance, then moderate exercise takes care of the rest. Moderate is
say 70% of max HR while cycling. The trick is finding the calorie
intake balance, and I think with intense exercise the number of
calories a person must eat might actually go up from when they were
sedentary and overweight. This is hard to manage succesfully I think.
I guess my theory is that calorie management for people just starting
to try to lose fat is easier with moderate exercise.

Joseph

email hidden said:

...I think with intense exercise the number of
calories a person must eat might actually go up from when they were
sedentary and overweight. This is hard to manage succesfully I think.
I guess my theory is that calorie management for people just starting
to try to lose fat is easier with moderate exercise.

I agree that moderate exercise is generally best for burning fat
instead of muscle. Especially for people starting out, it's a good way
to get into the habit, avoid injury and see some positive changes.

That said, I don't think you can overlook the benefit of increased
metabolic rate from high-intensity work. For some hours after the
exercise is done your body continues to burn extra calories. Also, you
build more muscle that way and, day-to-day, muscle burns more calories
than fat. Even for a person of modest fitness, 1-2 short, intense
efforts a week in addition to daily moderate exercise will get much
better results.

Regards,
Anthony

On Aug 16, 7:08 pm, Anthony DeLorenzo <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

On Aug 16, 12:33 am, "[email hidden]"

Quoted message said:

...I think with intense exercise the number of
calories a person must eat might actually go up from when they were
sedentary and overweight. This is hard to manage succesfully I think.
I guess my theory is that calorie management for people just starting
to try to lose fat is easier with moderate exercise.

I agree that moderate exercise is generally best for burning fat
instead of muscle. Especially for people starting out, it's a good way
to get into the habit, avoid injury and see some positive changes.

That said, I don't think you can overlook the benefit of increased
metabolic rate from high-intensity work. For some hours after the
exercise is done your body continues to burn extra calories. Also, you
build more muscle that way and, day-to-day, muscle burns more calories
than fat. Even for a person of modest fitness, 1-2 short, intense
efforts a week in addition to daily moderate exercise will get much
better results.

Regards,
Anthony

That is true, and intense exercise increases fitness allowing greater
and lengthlier efforts later. But as you say, I think people starting
out should ease their way into more intense efforts with a focus on
getting into the swing of things. Trying to jump into a killer workout
regime along with a 100% healthful low calorie diet for someone used
to little activity and an excess of unhealtful food just increases
their chances of giving up from being frustrated by being tired and
hungry all the time.

Joseph

Quoted message said:

My problem was that with hard workouts I was overdoing it when I would
eat afterwards because I was so hungry. With hard workouts I was doing
in a way 3 steps forward then 2 back when I would overeat afterwards.
With moderate exercise it was like 2 steps forward, zero back.

I find it amusing when someone tells me "I walked down to the market
and back, I've been exercising!" and they're drinking a 20oz
sugar-laden Coke that they bought at the market. Suppose the
corner market is 1 mile away; they might have burned 200 kcal
walking, and the sode has 260... whoops. IMO, the reason this
usually happens is that most people have no idea whatsoever about
the calories burned by activities, and very little idea about
the impact of the food/drink they eat. It often isn't a lack
of trying, it's a lack of relevant metrics. You can't manage
what you don't measure, and the level of precision required is
quite loose.

Quoted message said:

People
who are overweight have by definition a poor sense of when enough-is-
enough eating wise, so stimulating their appetite with vigorous
exercise might not be such a good idea. With good self discipline
maybe it will work fine, but if they had good self discipline maybe
they wouldn't be overweight in the first place!

It's not just self-discipline; I've met more than a few people
that sincerely want to lose weight, and even deny themselves many
things that they think are "bad" without knowing what really is.
Eating-out especially is fraught with peril, regardless of the
type of the restaurant, because people just don't know what's
in the food they're eating, and what the impact of the portion
size really is.

When I decided I really had to manage my weight, I realized that
my diet was high in fat and very high in carbs; though I wasn't
eating *that* much, I was making up for the small portion size
by eating fairly "dense" food. One of the most valuable things
I did was to shift my diet to once again include fresh vegetables
and fruit, and reduce the amount of high-starch vegetables.

But, to make it work, I had to become much more aware of
the dietary qualities of the things I was eating, so I
could get an objective grasp on it.

Once I had a clue what I was eating, I had to gain a clue
how much I needed to eat. Estimating daily caloric needs
doesn't need to be precise at all; there are several web
sites that all give about the same result. Are they correct?
I don't know - it really doesn't matter. Once you've got
an estimate of caloric needs and an estimate of what you're
eating and understand that 1 pound of fat equates to about
3500 calories, you can then start to manage weight.

It's easy to work the math and figure, if you're losing 2lbs
a week on the average, you're burning about 7000 kcal a
week, or 1000 kcal a day, more than you're eating. Precision
just doesn't matter much here, and you can start to develop an
idea of balance.

Quoted message said:

As far as tipping the scales such that "out"<"in", my theory is that
most people who are overweight have a daily calorie surplus of only a
few hunded calories max. These few hundred can easily be eliminated
with minor changes in diet to get the intake-outake closer to in
balance, then moderate exercise takes care of the rest. Moderate is
say 70% of max HR while cycling. The trick is finding the calorie
intake balance,

100% agreement. Balance is the key word.

Quoted message said:

and I think with intense exercise the number of
calories a person must eat might actually go up from when they were
sedentary and overweight.

Well, maybe. Let's try some numbers. Let's assume we have a 40-year
old male that's 5' 11" tall and weighs 250lbs; using the calculator
at http://www.healthstatus.com/calculators.html , we estimate the
daily caloric need to be around 3600 kcal a day. The same person
at 170 lbs needs about 2500 kcal; the difference is 1100 kcal a day.
Depending on your definition of intense exercise, I suppose it's
possible that the 170 lbs person could need more kcals than when
he was 250 lbs. For example, riding 90 minutes at 15MPH requires
something like 1200 kcals. All of these numbers could be way
off, but, once a person starts measuring intake and expenditure,
they can pretty quickly gain a sense of what's what.

Quoted message said:

This is hard to manage succesfully I think.
I guess my theory is that calorie management for people just starting
to try to lose fat is easier with moderate exercise.

This is why attaching an objective number - even if it's not very
accurate - to both intake and expenditure is important. It decouples
how one eats from how one feels.

More than anything, I believe that moderate exercise is best
for people beginning to manage weight because they're more likely
to do it regularly. Just walking for 30 minutes at a brisk pace
is worth about 300 kcal for a 40-year old, 250lbs man, and probably
maintains about a 70% HRmax. If that same man tried cycling at
15MPH for 20 minutes after being sedentary, they probably wouldn't
do it again for a week.

Cheers,
Dana