A comprehensive and successful weight-loss program should incorporate both healthy eating and regular exercise. Whether you're doing low-intensity activities like walking, or higher-intensity activities like running, exercising causes you to burn calories. The higher-intensity exercises, however, are more effective at burning calories and thus will cause you to lose more body fat. Consult your doctor before beginning any new exercise regimen.
Weight Loss
Exercise is beneficial for those looking to lose weight because it increases the total number of calories you burn in a day. To lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume. Every pound of fat loss requires a caloric deficit of 3,500. Therefore, exercising regularly will increase the number of calories you burn and help create this caloric deficit. The most efficient workouts are the ones that burn the most calories in a relatively short amount of time.
Relationship of Intensity and Calories Burned
Higher-intensity workouts burn more calories than lower-intensity workouts and thus better support weight-loss efforts. According to a study published in 1997 in the "Journal of the American College of Nutrition," a group of women showed a significantly greater decrease in body fat after 11 weeks of exercising at high intensities four days per week, while those who exercised at lower intensity showed no change in body fat.
Myths
In past decades, conventional fitness wisdom held that exercising at a lower-to-moderate intensity was better for weight loss, because during lower-intensity workouts, your body is breaking down the stored fat on your body to use as fuel. Thus, "The Globe and Mail" newspaper notes, on most exercise heart rate charts, you will find lower intensity labeled as the fat-burning zone. Once you increase the exercise intensity to 60 percent of your maximum heart rate (which you calculate by subtracting your age from 220), you begin to also use carbohydrates for fuel, because they are more easily broken down into glucose to fuel your tissues. And though higher-intensity exercises force your body to use more immediate forms of fuel, they also cause you to burn a greater number of calories overall. Burning enough calories to create a caloric deficit is what is necessary for weight loss --- regardless of where those calories come from.
Considerations
While higher-intensity exercise is more efficient for weight loss, working out at too high an intensity will prevent you from being able to sustain your workout for an adequate amount of time. The American Council on Exercise recommends exercising at 50 to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate, which is also considered your target heart rate zone. If you're able to sustain your workout while closer to 80 percent of maximal heart rate intensity, you will maximize the number of calories burned. Working out at a higher rate than that will be hard to maintain over time.
References
- "Journal of the American College of Nutrition"; The Effects of Exercise Intensity on Body Composition, Weight Loss, and Dietary Composition in Women; R. W. Bryner, et al.; 1997
- American Council on Exercise: Monitoring Exercise Intensity Using Heart Rate
- "The Globe and Mail"; The Secret to Weight-Loss Workouts; Alex Hutchinson; Aug. 5, 2010
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