Achieving a heart rate in the “fat burning zone” during exercise will allow you to burn more calories.
- To burn more calories, you have to exercise while keeping your heart rate in the “fat burning zone”.
- This can be calculated individually, depending on their age.
- To keep your heart rate in the “fat burning zone”, it is better to favor cardio sports such as brisk walking, swimming or cycling.
Between 500 and 1,000 calories per hour for running, 350 to 500 calories for rowing, between 500 and 700 for stepping… When you play sports, you necessarily burn calories, even more with so-called cardio exercises. But, a trick allows you to burn even more calories: keep your heart rate at a level called the “fat burning zone”, which would be optimal for weight loss.
An ideal frequency for weight loss
To find your “fat burning zone”, you have to do a little math! This is between 64% and 76% of a person’s maximum heart rate. Thus, the first thing to calculate is the maximum heart rate which is obtained by subtracting his age from the figure 220. For a person who is 40 years old, it is 180.
Then you have to determine the lower limit of the fat burning zone (maximum heart rate for your age x 0.64) and the upper limit (maximum heart rate for your age x 0.76). So for the 40-year-old, the “fat burning zone” is between 115 and 137 beats per minute during training. Obviously, with age, these numbers decrease. For a 60 year old, the “fat burning zone” is between 102 and 121.
Gentler cardio sports for stable heart rate
Thus, if the goal of sports practice is to lose weight, it is therefore better to favor relatively gentle cardio exercises that allow you to have a stable heart rate for longer. These include, for example, brisk walking, cycling or swimming.
On the other hand, to lose weight, the body must expend all the calories provided to it by eating. The ideal is to alternate between “cardio” sports sessions and muscle building activities that increase muscle mass… And the more muscular the body, the more calories it expends at rest.
Finally, in addition to sports practice, it is essential to have a varied and balanced diet to lose weight.
