Do you workout with little or no results?
Maybe it’s your workout I-N-T-E-N-S-I-T-Y!
By Dr. Len Lopez

For all the time, energy and effort people are putting into their workouts they should be getting better results. Most people who exercise and can’t understand why they are not losing weight and adding tone to their body, need to look at their workout intensity.

We have learned about stress and diet and how various hormones trigger our body to burn or store fat. We need to ask the same question when we workout, does your workout trigger your body to burn fats, proteins or carbohydrates? Remember, the key to losing weight and keeping it off is burning calories from stored body fat. When the machine you finished exercising on indicates you burned 300 calories, it doesn’t tell you if you burned those calories from carbohydrates, proteins or fats.

Let’s start with the basics, aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Common aerobic exercise is walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, aerobic dance, etc. Anaerobic exercise is weight training, sprinting, downhill skiing, speed skating. When you exercise your body will breakdown calories to produce energy, if you’re trying to lose weight and burn-off body fat it is important that your workouts trigger the breakdown of fats for energy.

Aerobic exercise
With oxygen
Burns fats
Low to moderate intensity
Long duration
Reduces stress

Anaerobic exercise
Without oxygen
Burns carbohydrates and proteins
High intensity
Short duration
Increases stress

The reason many people aren’t getting the results from their workouts is they are doing their aerobic exercise at too high an intensity (they walk, jog, etc…too fast), which triggers anaerobic metabolism. Please understand, just because you did aerobic exercise doesn’t mean your triggered your metabolism to burn fat. Remember, aerobic means with oxygen, if there is no oxygen available because you are walking, jogging, swimming etc. too fast… your body will be forced to burn calories from proteins and carbohydrates - not fats!

So the next question is, how high of an intensity can we train at and still breakdown calories from fats and not protein and carbohydrates? This is called your ‘aerobic capacity’, or fat burning zone.

You determine your fat burning zone by monitoring your heart rate. The best way to do this is to use a heart rate monitor when you do your aerobic training. Keep your heart rate around 70% of your maximum.

Dr. Len Lopez is a Certified Clinical Nutritionist (C.C.N.), Certified Chiropractic Sports Physician (C.C.S.P.), Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (C.S.C.S.), with additional training in Applied Kinesiology and Homeopathy.