Most people think that if they burn calories in any cardio movement, they burn fat. Not necessarily so. The main difference has to do with heartbeat, muscle contraction and the length of the exercise.

To burn fat, certain conditions must apply. Your glucose or blood sugar must be low, as in first thing in the morning, or approx 3.5 hours after a meal. Secondly, you must raise the heart rate with an exercise that demands up to 135 beats per minute of heart rate, depending on age, health and condition of the body. The reason the heart beats is to
send oxygen to the cells. The more oxygen is needed, the more the heart beats. For fat to burn, one must not raise the heart rate to contract muscles. You must raise the heart rate where the usage of energy can be replaced easy and use fat as the energy source, once the blood is low on sugar. Fat is dense and will take time to break down. That’s why you do cardio at low intensity, so that glycogen, the energy used in muscle contraction is not used. If you do cardio at a low level, like a fast walk, and no incline on a treadmill, or low resistance on an elliptical, you’ll achieve a heart rate that will use up glucose then change to fat usage. On low sugar levels, this takes approx 7 to 9 minutes. A good time to stay on the treadmill, elliptical or an exercise bike is from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Along with controlled nutrition, one can expect to lose about 2 lbs of fat per week. Each lb of fat contains 3500 calories.

Endurance training is very different. You can use all of the cardio equipment I’ve mentioned above, like the treadmill, bike and elliptical, and then some like rowers, spin bikes and steppers and but more muscle contractions are needed. Conditions must be met. The mandate is to enlarge capillaries so you transfer more oxygen to the cells. However, more oxygen is needed because the exercise demands more resistance, elevation and muscle contraction. The endurance portion comes in when an exercise is done at high intensity or resistance over a long period of time, going to failure, where the body cannot supply enough oxygen and glycogen to contract muscles further. Then you would get off the treadmill, elliptical or bike and allow recovery, for perhaps a minute. Then you would go on again and repeat this as much as you can. The longer you can stay on a cardio machine at high resistance or elevation, the more efficient the body is at using oxygen and you don’t produce free radicals or oxidated cell for the liver to get rid of. You’ll go up a flight of stairs and feel like you’ve walked across the floor. It’s like having more power in your car and using less gas. To allow recovery, you must not do this method of exercise every day. Give about 3 days in between sessions. Cardio for fat burn can be done every day.

Check out the bikes, ellipticals and treadmills on our site and ask us which ones would be suited to your needs.

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