moderate intensity cardio VS hIgh intensity for fat burninig

[jersey boy]

30 minutes of moderate intensity cardio is best for muscle preservation. If you're heart rate raises over 70% of th max. heart rate.....your body will go into an aneorbic state which means it will be in depletion of oxygen therefore turning to the muscle cells for energy rather than fat cells. Your heart rate during cardio should be between 55-70% of the max heart rate.

This is pretty much it. 60-70% for fat loss. 70-80% for cardiovascular health.
fat loss-fat for energy
cardiovascular workout-minimal fat , more glucose/glycogen for energy

 

[Cuts]

I just recently read in last month's MM about a study that was done about this very topic. Supposedly, although the longer duration, lower intensity cardio sessions burned approximately the same # of calories as the shorter duration, super intense sessions, the difference came in the hours FOLLOWING the cardio. According to the article, a significantly higher # of calories were burned during the 4-6 hours after the cardio for the short super intense session than for the longer lower intensity ones. Apparently the conclusion was that short, intense bursts of cardio were not catabolic to muscle, and successfully upped one's BMR for the next few hours to allow them to shed more fat. What followed was the rest of the article about "Guerilla Cardio..." a prescription for crazy intense, 4 minute cardio sessions that are specifically designed to maintain muscle and burn fat (and lessen the torcher of 30-40 minutes of boredom). If ya'll want more details, I suppose I could scan the article and post it. Let me know. Oh yeah, please give me some Karma... I don't like that "Cuts has only a little Karma" shit. Thanks.

 

[Hoffmeister]

Cuts:

Read the link above. I'm pretty sure it is the study you are referring to.

Bigmag:

Again, read the studies. High Intensity Intervals are much better for fat loss than moderate-low-intensity cardio. What they show is that the "fuel" used during exercise (fat or glycogen) is pretty much irrelevant to actual fat loss. It's what happens afterwards (as Cuts mentioned).

Look at it this way. It supposedly takes you what, 15 minutes of low-moderate cardio to get into the "fat-burning" zone? A 30-minute session burns maybe 300 calories, so say 150 calories are burned in the "fat-burning zone". At that rate, it would take you 23 sessions to burn a lbs of "fat". Post Exercise calorie burn is virtually non-existent with low-moderate cardio.

 

[bigmag]

Cuts:

Read the link above. I'm pretty sure it is the study you are referring to.

Bigmag:

Again, read the studies. High Intensity Intervals are much better for fat loss than moderate-low-intensity cardio. What they show is that the "fuel" used during exercise (fat or glycogen) is pretty much irrelevant to actual fat loss. It's what happens afterwards (as Cuts mentioned).

Look at it this way. It supposedly takes you what, 15 minutes of low-moderate cardio to get into the "fat-burning" zone? A 30-minute session burns maybe 300 calories, so say 150 calories are burned in the "fat-burning zone". At that rate, it would take you 23 sessions to burn a lbs of "fat". Post Exercise calorie burn is virtually non-existent with low-moderate cardio.

I never said that moderate cardio is better for fat burning.....I said moderate cardio is better for muscle preservation and if you read that article again.....you'll notice it doesn't mention anything about muscular breakdown.

 

[Hoffmeister]

I never said that moderate cardio is better for fat burning.....I said moderate cardio is better for muscle preservation and if you read that article again.....you'll notice it doesn't mention anything about muscular breakdown.

No, it doesn't explicitly say that.

What it does say is that, per MJ expended during exercise, HIIT was 9 times more effective at actual fat loss. This was due to raised BMR the rest of the day, when at rest, when about 70% of the calories burned are fat.

Any time you actually exercise, muscle will be broken down. Even low-moderate cardio will be catabolic. And based on the study, you would have to expend 9 times the work actually exercising at low-moderate cardio to get the same fat loss.

Seriously, which do you think will result in more muscle preservation to get the same level of fat loss?

 

[DONALDuckY]

soooo...does this mean that i should drop the moderate cardio and go HIT instead for maximum fat loss AND maximum muscle preservation?

 

[MS]

None of those studies look at long term affect of one type of cardio over another. They only look at fat oxidation over 24 hours. If you look at studies that follow obese folks over MONTHS, you will find there is little difference between the two approaches with regard to fat loss, but the interval group usually have more LBM at the end of the trials. It is not clear if this applies to lean people, but I would think a mixture of both types of cardio would be prudent. I personally consider weight training to be a type of anaerobic interval training, so I do weights, a little bit of sprinting and lots of walking/hiking.

 

[Hoffmeister]

MS, I don't know for sure what you consider long term. But the Tremblay study ran for 20 weeks (endurance) and 15 weeks (intervals). The results were reported over the duration.

 

[bigmag]

I'm with MS.....a mixture of both is probably the best way to go. Check this site out:
http://www.janatrains.com/intensity.htm

this goes along with what my point was. It explains it a little better than I did.

 

[Cuts]

Here's something to chew on:

1) Look at professional sprinters

2) Look at professional marathon runners

Although this may be over simplified somewhat, it is kind of an interesting comparison...