Fat Burning Question

craiguk

I'm trying to loose a couple of pounds of fat from around my waist but can't seem to loose it. I'm not particularly overweight, 14 stone 6ft 3ins. I also do alot of riding at a pretty brisk pace, typically about 150-200 miles a week at around 18mph plus average. As you would expect legs and arms wise I'm lean but I still have a bit to lose on my waist.

My question is, can I loose the belly fat through cycling alone or do I need to try something different to shed the fat? When in the fat burning zone on the bike does the body only burn fat adjacent to the working muscles i.e legs or will it burn fat from elsewhere?

SteveR_100Milers

To become race thin you need to more miles, and probably spend some of them at considerably faster than brisk pace. Or do the same effort/distance and eat less sweet/fatty foods. (especially beer - its so difficult to shift weight especially when you are older if you drink).

carlstone

Hi Craig

You cannot spot reduce fat. The only way to get rid of it is as Steve says. However be warned some people have a propensity to store fat and to get rid of that last bit will mean a real push to reduce calories and increase training which can be detrimental to your health/fitness. I would suggest you give the above a try but if you start feeling worse/ill to go back to your previous regime, as for general fitness you are doing plenty of exercise now.

Bronzie

I've always understood that "fat-burning" rides are very low intensity (less than your aerobic threshold) and very long. Typically 5 hours at <15mph (although this will obviously depend on your base fitness - you'd need to measure your heart rate zones and ride to a heart rate monitor to be sure).

Riding high tempo (aerobic / anaerobic) will deplete muscle glycogen, but not burn fat. Of course, if your calorie intake is less than what you use during exercise, you will use fat reserves to make up the difference anyway, but this type of riding is not fat-burning per se.

farrell

I think it is really important to keep healthy while training. Fat is an important part of a healthy body.

If you want to improve your body image then perhaps do more miles ( 200 - 250 per week ) in the right zone ( make sure your numbers are correct ) and don't starve yourself - you will need the energy for the next ride/recovery.

Just eat healthy freshly made food......and maybe do some core strength workouts.

therookie_31

The way the body works, is that in the five or six weeks after you started your training, the fat you lose is all from the inside (fat in arteries i.e. cholesterol, around your intestines and it continues to go superficial, which means closer to you skin. So you lose the fat from the inside first than it continues towards your skin.

Usually men are ''apple shaped'' which means that we have more fat around our stomach and in the mid-region, which promotes metabolism problems. Compared to women, that are ''pear shaped'', that fat is much more ''everywhere'' if I can say and not primarly in the abdomen area.

To lose weight. You have to be in the lower than your HR threshold. Around 60% of your HR max. To find your HR Max, simply do 220-age, then multiply by 0.60 to give you your 60% of you HR max. Don't forget nutrition too. Not because your riding that you have to stop eating to accelerate fat losing. You'll just run into overtrain. Make sure you eat, but healthier. Fruits, vegggies and the good stuff!

naz-t

if your gonna be lowering fat intake to get that last few pounds you need to get yourself some healthy fats which the body needs to process things, pop down the local health shop or holland and barret and get some flax seed oil and add to your daily supplements

SteveR_100Milers

The "fat burning range" that is often quoted is perhaps easily misunderstood. In very basic terms, As your intensity levels increase, the primary fuel burnt switches from mostly stored body fat to a mixture of body fat and stored glycogen to mostly glycogen at max efforts. You still burn fat in almost all of these situations, indeed at TT pace you will still be burning body fat at a higher rate than at 60% MHR rides. However, fat takes time to transport from the body tissue, and then has to be broken down into glucose which takes more time and energy to complete than that for glycogen to be converted into glucose - thus at highly intense efforts fat is too slow to be of any use, so the body will switch to glycogen.

The key factor is of course length of work out: you cant ride at TT pace for the same length of time as you can sunday club run without having to refuel on the way. You can ride for much longer periods at lower intensities, so in theory, providing you put the mileage in, you should burn a greater total quantity of body fat on a long slow steady ride. What tends to happen though is that most of us dont do enough, so put weight on in the winter, only to burn it off once we up the intensity and start racing.

craiguk

Thanks for some good detailed responses, pretty much what I was expecting to hear really. Last year I was dcommuting daily and was alot leaner. This year due to change of circumstance I'm unable to commute and that probably is part of the problem as my mileage is lower.

Am i right in thinking that shorter rides do little to burn fat as the body depletes it's stock of carbs before switching to fat? I only normally manage one ride over 35 miles per week, on a weekend due to work, family life etc :?

SteveR_100Milers

craiguk wrote:

Thanks for some good detailed responses, pretty much what I was expecting to hear really. Last year I was dcommuting daily and was alot leaner. This year due to change of circumstance I'm unable to commute and that probably is part of the problem as my mileage is lower.

Am i right in thinking that shorter rides do little to burn fat as the body depletes it's stock of carbs before switching to fat? I only normally manage one ride over 35 miles per week, on a weekend due to work, family life etc :?

No. Your primary fuel burnt is dependant on intensity. The harder you go the more energy you use obviously, but the ratio of fat to glycogen changes, even when the absolute levels of both are increasing with effort.

oldwelshman

In a nutshell without getting too technical, if you work at higher heart rate you will burn off much more fat but at a less efficient rate then lower heart rate. You will also be burning fat off for a couple of hours after you stop, as long as you dont binge on sweets after wards
The best time to do this training is in the early morning as you will not be burning off glycogen so much as you will not have eaten a meal like in evening. Just ride with water for re hydration and a gel for reserve.
I am sure you will find articles on net for best methods of burning fat and doing fat burning rides.

ColinJ

Hi Craig. I'm nearly your size (6'1.5", currently 13 st 8 lbs) and like you I tend to carry some fat on my belly even when the rest of me is pretty skinny. About 6 years ago I got my weight down to 11 st 10 lbs and my face looked really gaunt, so much so that friends and relatives started to get worried about me. Even then though, I still had a 2" roll of fat round my waist. I'd have to get down to an unhealthily low weight to get rid of it altogether. I find that once I get much below 12 stone I start to feel the cold and I am more prone to illness. I also don't feel as strong on the bike. I've decided that it is better to stop worrying about the last few inches, and just enjoy my cycling.

Currently, however, having been on a two year holiday from slimness, I do feel I am carrying a bit too much weight and am trying to get some off! I started doing 200 km audax rides last autumn, and have clocked up about 10 of them since then so I've built up some experience of what such 10-12 hour steady rides do to my body. I eat and drink as much as I am comfortable with on the bike, but still come back weighing about 7 lbs less than when I started. About 5-6 lbs of that is due to fluid loss and is replaced over a day or two. The remainder stays off, unless I pig out on food, which I usually manage to avoid. In fact, I find it difficult to eat a big meal on my return, and then just eat normally on following days. I think that people who get really hungry after cycling haven't been eating and drinking enough when they are out. The fat I lose on those rides comes mainly from my waist and 'love handles' - the difference is very noticeable.

Your body may be different to mine, but from my personal experience, the answer to your question is yes, it is possible to lose fat from the belly just by cycling. I'd lose 2 lbs from that area by riding about 300 kms at about 15 kph average speed, providing I stuck to my usual eating and drinking regimes. It shouldn't matter whether that workload is done as one 300 km ride, four 75 km rides, or even ten 30 km rides. PS Having thought about it, I'd say that for weight loss it is better to do several shorter rides rather than just one long one because after exercise your metabolic rate remains elevated for some time and that would burn extra calories. Also, I've just noticed that you wrote that you can't do many long rides so lots of shorter ones would be better for you anyway.

If you ride quicker, you'd burn more fat per hour, but you'd be burning more carbs too and would have to be replacing those as you went along or you'd soon get very tired and very hungry.

jc4lab

After a long ride I just crave food ...sometimes a family size pizza or even a chinese meal to two seems tempting.For me the after bike binge always spoil all the good work...I am not sure if listing to your body is always a good thing...How can you curb such a ravenous appetite after riding?

ColinJ

jc4lab wrote:

After a long ride I just crave food ...sometimes a family size pizza or even a chinese meal to two just ain't enough.For me the after bike binge always spoil all the good work...I am not sure if listing to your body is always a good thing...How can you curb such a ravenous appetite after riding?

I rode from Coventry to Hebden Bridge last week through the Peak District. That was a distance of about 215 km, with about 4,000m of climbing, into a headwind, taking just short of 14 hours! I didn't feel particularly hungry from when I got up at 03:30 to when I went to bed at 23:30. Here is a breakdown of what I ate and drank:

Pre-ride:
About 0.5 L of energy drink made up of Maxim carbo powder in 2/3 water, 1/3 orange juice.
2 bread rolls with honey and banana.

On the ride:
5 * 0.75L bottles of energy drink made up as above
1 * 0.5L bottle of cold real Coca Cola (I wanted the sugar!)
1 * 0.5L bottle of cold mineral water (I wanted a change from the drinks above - I was getting sick of sweet stuff)
Another 2 bread rolls with honey and banana.
Two two-finger Kit Kats
One penguin bar
An apricot and date fruit bar
One SIS gel (to give me a boost for the 25% climb of Strines!)

Immediately post-ride:
As soon as I got home - the C+ suggestion of a cold bottle of chocolate milk shake! I really like that one - it is much cheaper than REGO and probably does 90% of the good for 25% of the price!

An hour later:
After getting washed and changed... I had nothing in the house so I went to the supermarket and bought a cheese salad sandwich and a tuna and cucmber sandwich. I'd lost a lot of salt on the ride (my face was encrusted with it when I got home!) so that was my excuse to knock back a bag of plain crisps as well.

Breakfast, next morning:
Normal appetite, so normal breakfast of muesli, soya milk, banana and natural yoghurt with a teaspoon of honey. Big mug of tea.

Rest of day:
Normal food, but felt dehydrated so kept supping water all day.

It works for me!

naz-t

jc4lab, the cravings you speak of ie pizza etc after your excercise is your body craving carbs, what you should have instead is some good quality protien

Ric_Stern/RST

To lose fat mass, you need to expend more energy than you take in. It doesn't matter where the energy comes from (i.e., the fuel mix burnt) so long as you expend more.

At low intensity exercise you 'burn' a greater proportion of fat, whereas, at high intensity efforts you burn a greater proportion of carbs (CHO). It's this, that makes people (mistakenly) think that low intensity more 'fat burning' exercise is better for weight loss than higher intensity exercise.

However, while a greater proportion of fat is oxidised at lower intensity, the most important point is expending greater energy. While true, this leads to a second erroneous thought: at lower intensity exercise levels you can exercise for a greater period of time (e.g., think about the absolute intensity involved in a 12 hr TT versus a 200-metre sprint). However, most people do not have unlimited training time available to them, and/or have goals over or adjacent to 'just' weight loss (e.g. some increased measure of fitness).

Thus, the best way of losing fat mass, and increasing energy expenditure, is to simply ride as *hard* as you can in the time that you have available while being able to recover for the next training session in time.

Ric

Ric_Stern/RST

Post exercise, the most important macronutrient is carbohydrate to replenish the carbs expended during the session, and to enable you to be fuelled for the next session.

Exercising on an empty stomach, e.g. first thing in the morning, will mean that you exercise on depleted glycogen reserves, which in turn will mean your riding intensity will be lower than normal, and thus you'll expend less energy than you wanted to.

Ric

SteveR_100Milers

Ric_Stern/RST wrote:

To lose fat mass, you need to expend more energy than you take in. It doesn't matter where the energy comes from (i.e., the fuel mix burnt) so long as you expend more.

At low intensity exercise you 'burn' a greater proportion of fat, whereas, at high intensity efforts you burn a greater proportion of carbs (CHO). It's this, that makes people (mistakenly) think that low intensity more 'fat burning' exercise is better for weight loss than higher intensity exercise.

However, while a greater proportion of fat is oxidised at lower intensity, the most important point is expending greater energy. While true, this leads to a second erroneous thought: at lower intensity exercise levels you can exercise for a greater period of time (e.g., think about the absolute intensity involved in a 12 hr TT versus a 200-metre sprint). However, most people do not have unlimited training time available to them, and/or have goals over or adjacent to 'just' weight loss (e.g. some increased measure of fitness).

Thus, the best way of losing fat mass, and increasing energy expenditure, is to simply ride as *hard* as you can in the time that you have available while being able to recover for the next training session in time.
Ric

so what about "easy" days? Surely you can't ride every day hard during the season and expect to go well in your target events? For example, I have on average 2 events per week: a midweek TT and a weekend TT. I ride easy days (and 2 days a week doing nothing but thats because of time constraints) in between....is this the wrong approach?

I am after a simple programme for next year to target sub hour 25TT

Ric_Stern/RST

Apologies, i was answering the question about fat loss, not training for performance (although i did mention this issue).

You're correct, potentially, you may need rest days, or easy days, and also hard days for specific training.

Please feel free to give me a shout about a specific coaching programme

cheers
ric

SteveR_100Milers

OK will email separately.

Mark Alexander

I like the simplified explanation Ric. That makes a lot of sense.

passout

Much of this is too technical for me but I can assure that slower but nonetheless steady rides work brilliantly at shifting weight - 4 hours plus. Aim at 4 hour rides, start slowly and then build up speed.