Specific fat burning rides

funk-meister

Can i get some advice on specific fat burning rides please. I am 72kg cycle about 30 miles daily. For fat burning is it all about riding at specific heart rates or what....enlighten me please

styxd

Ride as hard as you can

For as long as you can

Alex_Simmons/RST

funk-meister wrote:

Can i get some advice on specific fat burning rides please. I am 72kg cycle about 30 miles daily. For fat burning is it all about riding at specific heart rates or what....enlighten me please

Fat burning rides and training levels are a myth.

If you want to reduce excess body fat, then you need to maintain a sustainable energy (calorie) deficit over the period of desired weight loss.

You do that by metabolising as many calories as possible through exercise, but more importantly through reducing your calorie intake - by eating less and/or by eating less energy dense foods.

IOW - from a cycling / exercise point of view, ride as hard as you can sustain for the the duration you have available to train in order to metabolise as many calories as possible.

P_Tucker

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

funk-meister wrote:

Can i get some advice on specific fat burning rides please. I am 72kg cycle about 30 miles daily. For fat burning is it all about riding at specific heart rates or what....enlighten me please

Fat burning rides and training levels are a myth.

If you want to reduce excess body fat, then you need to maintain a sustainable energy (calorie) deficit over the period of desired weight loss.

You do that by metabolising as many calories as possible through exercise, but more importantly through reducing your calorie intake - by eating less and/or by eating less energy dense foods.

IOW - from a cycling / exercise point of view, ride as hard as you can sustain for the the duration you have available to train in order to metabolise as many calories as possible.

I give it 3 hours before someone, using a personal anecdote as evidence, claims that you are wrong.

nmcgann

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

funk-meister wrote:

Can i get some advice on specific fat burning rides please. I am 72kg cycle about 30 miles daily. For fat burning is it all about riding at specific heart rates or what....enlighten me please

Fat burning rides and training levels are a myth.

If you want to reduce excess body fat, then you need to maintain a sustainable energy (calorie) deficit over the period of desired weight loss.

You do that by metabolising as many calories as possible through exercise, but more importantly through reducing your calorie intake - by eating less and/or by eating less energy dense foods.

IOW - from a cycling / exercise point of view, ride as hard as you can sustain for the the duration you have available to train in order to metabolise as many calories as possible.

Actually Alex, I thought it was pretty well universally accepted that the proportion of carbohydrate and fat utilised does vary with exercise intensity and is an increased proportion of fat at lower intensity?

(however everything else you say is true and is the reason why exercising at the lower intensities isn't terribly useful for weight loss - unless the person trying to lose weight can afford to spend a very long time on the bike)

P_Tucker

nmcgann wrote:

Actually Alex, I thought it was pretty well universally accepted that the proportion of carbohydrate and fat utilised does vary with exercise intensity and is an increased proportion of fat at lower intensity?

It is. Where does he say it isn't?

Alex_Simmons/RST

nmcgann wrote:

Actually Alex, I thought it was pretty well universally accepted that the proportion of carbohydrate and fat utilised does vary with exercise intensity and is an increased proportion of fat at lower intensity?

It does, but that has nothing to do with reducing one's body fat - it's the total calorie deficit over the medium term that dictates that. The fuel subtrate utilisation ratio while exercising isn't relevant.

One can do a very hard hour, have been almost exclusively reliant on carbs for fuel, yet lose excess body fat provided they maintain a reasonable negative calorie balance.

Hence - just burn as much as you can for the block of training time you have available.

Personally however I think people should train to improve sustainable aerobic power (as that enables one to increase the rate of energy metabolised over the medium to longer term), and eat to get lean.

Mccaria

Also it's my understanding that on less intense workouts you burn a higher proportion of fat to carbs and on a more intense work out you burn a higher proportion of carbs but in absolute terms you still burn more fat through a higher intensity workout. So if you have an hout session a higher inensity workout will burn more fat in total than a lower inensity workout.

As long as your body can cope with the inensity level, for a finite period a high intensity work out will burn more fat than at a lower intensity level. But to paraphrase Alex the main thing is not to reach for the Snickers bar at the end of the workout !

Xommul

Ok fella, here is the long and short of it.

You have 2 options based on the amount of time you have.
1. Interval Training on or off the bike
2. Long medium paced cycling.

1.
Warm up for about 5 mins, do some stretches to loosen the muscles and joints
Sprint at 90-100% of your max for 1 minute to 1.5 mins
Then cool down at about 30-40% of you max for 2 mins.
Rinse repeat 8 times.
Cool down with 5 mins of slow cycling followed by stretches.


Get yourself a heart rate monitor.

For fat burning you want a slow pace over a long period of time.

You want your hear rate to stay at around 55-65% of its max, you can work out yours by following the heart rate monitors guide or looking on you tube.

Then ride for over an hour. This will keep you in the fat burning zone. Exercise any higher and your body uses its energy stores from muscle rather than fat as its harder to motabilise fat than stored muscle energy.

The first option is less time consuming and will also help strengthen your legs and give you a faster sprint ability. 2nd Option lets you cycle for ages and enjoy your ride.

You can do either of these 2 things by running/walking as well plu lots of other sports.

Its all ut there on the internet m8, dont just confine yourself to cycling, i reckon running will burn it off quicker as its full body exercise and you burn more calories in shorter time.

Good heart rate monitor is Polar P7 about 35 quid.

All the best

Xom

Buckled_Rims

funk-meister wrote:

Can i get some advice on specific fat burning rides please. I am 72kg cycle about 30 miles daily. For fat burning is it all about riding at specific heart rates or what....enlighten me please

The fat burning is debatable. Possibly what you might have heard is training on empty stomach and eating less.

For a beginner try this. Don't eat anything after 7pm at night except a drink of tea or coffee. Wake up at (say) 7am the next day, have a cup of tea or coffee (no sugar). Then cycle hard for 1 hour (increase over the next few weeks to 2 hours) on the empty stomach. After an hour eat a cereal bar and continue your cycling training.

What you then feel during the rest of the day is an incredible need to eat :shock: It's at this time you need to resist and eat a normal size meal and no snacks.

This may take a few weeks, but is great for beginners to lose weight.

Xommul

Also stop eating crap and at 5 small balanced meals a day, bit of carbs, bit of protein, some salads. Use olive oil or dry fry with balsamic vinegar/white wine vinegar. 1 tbsp of oil is over 100 calories!!!

Eating less but more often keeps you full and stops you craving. Keep a bag of nut and fruit mix on stand by when u want something sweet. Only a handful mind!

It will speed up your metabilism and help burn more calories.

Do your exercises in the morning for a better calorie burn all day.

And no carbs after 1900-2000 hours.

floosy

What I found was that if I did a hard ride for say 1-1.5 hours I would get very hungry afterwards, which resulted in me eating enough food to satisfy the cravings.

If I rode for 2-3 hours at a lower intesity and burned the same amount of calories.
I would not be so hungry thus leaving me in a deficit for the ride.

What I then found as a result of this was.... I actually went out less on the bike and started doing a lot more walking..(very low intensity) and tracking my food intake on livestrong.com (other food/excersise tracking sites are available).

I lost 28lbs over the winter by walking nearly 800miles...

Its a different point of view for you..

Dave.

Mccaria

Xommul,

My understanding is that the concept of doing long rides in a fat burning zone is a bit of a fallacy. Whilst you use a higher percentage of fat than carbs at a lower intensity, with the higher intensity workouts you burn a much higher percentage of carbs but in absolute terms you still burn off more fat than doing a fat burning zone workout.

So in a 1 hour ride in a fat burning zone you will not burn off as much fat as you do in a high intensity workout, same for a 2 hour ride etc, etc. Of course the critical factor is whether you have the level of fitness to sustain the workout at a higher intensity.

bompington

For anyone who hasn't got it yet, here is eveything you need to know about diet and exercise:
Burn more calories than you eat
Burn more calories than you eat
Burn more calories than you eat
Burn more calories than you eat
Burn more calories than you eat
Burn more calories than you eat

Hope that helps

Zoomer37

Buckled_Rims wrote:

funk-meister wrote:

Can i get some advice on specific fat burning rides please. I am 72kg cycle about 30 miles daily. For fat burning is it all about riding at specific heart rates or what....enlighten me please

For a beginner try this. Don't eat anything after 7pm at night except a drink of tea or coffee. Wake up at (say) 7am the next day, have a cup of tea or coffee (no sugar). Then cycle hard for 1 hour (increase over the next few weeks to 2 hours) on the empty stomach. After an hour eat a cereal bar and continue your cycling training.

What you then feel during the rest of the day is an incredible need to eat :shock: It's at this time you need to resist and eat a normal size meal and no snacks.

This may take a few weeks, but is great for beginners to lose weight.

Crikey.. What a horrible way to go through the day.

jgsi

Zoomer37 wrote:

Buckled_Rims wrote:

funk-meister wrote:

Can i get This may take a few weeks, but is great for beginners to lose weight.

Crikey.. What a horrible way to go through the day.

Not for a shaolin monk tho' otherwise not only horrible but also ridiculous

beware of any advice from the internet who 'advises' drinking only after 7pm and 'only' tea of coffee at that!... good God!

Xommul

No eating is the worst thing you can do,

Your metabolism stops and you enter a starvation phase making your body store everything and losing fat will be impossible.

Check the web m8, any sensible fitness expert recommends healthy eating more often and good exercise.

You dont want to loose too much too quickly as you will end up with lots of loose skin.

Nice and steady for the weight loss, turn the fat into muscle over time.

I know people dont fully agree with fat burning zones and there is a lot of debate but i thought i would throw it out there.

I am a interval training fan and it works wonders. High intensity for short bursts.

Just avoid fad diets cause no one sticks to them.

Xom

trickydisco

As i've said in a previous post

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... =#16972540

I'm following a lot of the principles of the 4 hour body (and have been for 5 months). I've dropped from 75kg to 69kg in that time.

I've cut out a lot of white carbs: bread,rice, pasta

I ditched breakfast for scrambled eggs, omelette , veg. I get a lot of my carbs from veg

I never lost any weight/fat through exercise it was only nutil i overhauled my diet i started to drop the lbs (not that i was fat before i wanted to become lean and improve my cycling performance)

Actually Alex.. I'm following a lot of advice from your colleague dave which he's given out on another forum

keef66

There is no mystery to it. As Alex has said, in order to lose weight you have to run a calorie deficit, ie burn more calories than you consume. You can tip the balance by exercising more and by eating less.
(See Bompington's post for the executive summary)

The fat burning zone is a myth based on the proportion of carbs / fats burned rather than the absolute amounts.

If you have say an hour to exercise, then going flat out for that hour will clearly burn more calories than pootling about at 70% MHR. With high intensity workouts you also continue to burn fat for several hours afterwards.

The hardest thing to master is FORK CONTROL.

Xommul

i lol at Fork Control - Step away from the chips fat boy!

MountainMonster

Ignore the heart rate zones part, and just cycle at a very good intensity.

If you ride for 1 hour at 90 percent intensity, you could burn say 1000 calories. I don't remember the exact figures people always say for the zones, but was 15 percent for a intense work out. That would be 150 calories taken from fat for an intense workout.

If you cycle at 60 percent intensity, in the "fat burning" zones, you may only burn 700 calories or so. 20 percent of that will come from fat, meaning you have burned basically the same amount of fat. Add in even more time, and you start to realise the whole fat burning zone is basically a myth.

Don't quote me on exact numbers as I can't remember the exact ones, but they were close enough that it was better to cycle at higher intensity as you then build much stronger muscles too.

A diet is the most important part though, no fatty foods, and don't eat any white carbs. Brown pasta and bread is a lot healthier, and tastes better (in my opinion). Also reduce the portions a bit until you have reached your goal.

Also, weight loss takes time. Don't expect to shed lots of weight straight away. I've been going on my weight loss plan for almost a year, and I'm 10kg lighter, and much healthier.

Don't push too hard and burn yourself out either.

Alex_Simmons/RST

trickydisco wrote:

As i've said in a previous post

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... =#16972540

I'm following a lot of the principles of the 4 hour body (and have been for 5 months). I've dropped from 75kg to 69kg in that time.

I've cut out a lot of white carbs: bread,rice, pasta

I ditched breakfast for scrambled eggs, omelette , veg. I get a lot of my carbs from veg

I never lost any weight/fat through exercise it was only nutil i overhauled my diet i started to drop the lbs (not that i was fat before i wanted to become lean and improve my cycling performance)

Actually Alex.. I'm following a lot of advice from your colleague dave which he's given out on another forum

Cool 8) , Dave Smith I presume (we have a couple of Daves at RST Sport). Which forum?

You are right in there are things one can do in what/when they eat which makes the process easier, but end of the day, the laws of thermodynamics still apply (energy is neither created nor destroyed) and the energy balance dictates the fat gain/loss overall.

Buckled_Rims

JGSI wrote:

Not for a shaolin monk tho' otherwise not only horrible but also ridiculous

beware of any advice from the internet who 'advises' drinking only after 7pm and 'only' tea of coffee at that!... good God!

Read this and explain to all others how "RIDICULOUS" it is.

http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/training/article/training-running-on-empty-18071

amaferanga

Buckled_Rims wrote:

JGSI wrote:

Not for a shaolin monk tho' otherwise not only horrible but also ridiculous

beware of any advice from the internet who 'advises' drinking only after 7pm and 'only' tea of coffee at that!... good God!

Read this and explain to all others how "RIDICULOUS" it is.

http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/training/article/training-running-on-empty-18071

You're presenting a Bikeradar article as evidence? :shock:

ut_och_cykla

funk-meister wrote:

Can i get some advice on specific fat burning rides please. I am 72kg cycle about 30 miles daily. For fat burning is it all about riding at specific heart rates or what....enlighten me please

Fat burning means lower heart rate zones that are still hard enough to induce adaptations - working hard will obviously burn more calories (including fat)and train you to ride hard - but there are down sides - the stress on your body is greater - injury risk is higher, the likelihood you will skip sessions is higher and the stress itself could raise cortisol levels meaning you will tend to retain fat despite all your efforts.
Whilst many have suggested you ride as hard as you can as much as you can I would suggest you try to mix your riding - doing longer regular more gentle sessions (tho' not easy) and shorter efforts where you really work hard - preferably as intervalls.