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Knowledge is power. Arm yourself.
The following articles are really great for understanding calorie deficits, how calories are burnt during exercise and much more.
Calorie Info and Understanding
Good article on calorie deficit and why you must create a deficit to burn fat.
http://www.weightlossforall.com/calculate%20cals.htm
Calories burnt calculations (for calculating what is burnt during exercise).
http://www.makeoverfitness.com/how_calories_are_burned.htm
Ask them to put cycling in mel on there
http://www.drgily.com/exercise-calorie-counter.php
Energy content of food – very interesting for understanding that you are what you eat!
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Kilojoules_and_calories-explained?OpenDocument
1 gram fat has 37kg
1000 grams (1 kg) has 37000kj
For a fit person that is 20 HOURS of non stop, high intensity exercise.
LOSING FAT IS HARD and will take time
You need to view this as a lot of little victories
I have lost around 28kg of fat.
That is 1036000kJ = 1 MILLION KJ
256,666 Exercise calories
22, 424 exercise minutes (11 calories/minute exercising @ MET=6)
373 hours
15 days NON STOP
MET levels
What they are and what they mean (very interesting for understanding exercise intensity).
http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/downloads/PA_Intensity_table_2_1.pdf
http://healthfullife.umdnj.edu/archives/exercise_health_archive.htm
One MET is the energy expenditure and caloric requirement at rest. Mild exercise such as walking at a leisurely pace increases energy expenditure to perhaps 2.5 METs/hour of walking. Vigorous activity can result in 6 to more than 12 METs/hour of activity.
We need to aim for 20 MET hours or more per week. This is easy.
Easy pace cycling is around 4 MET/hour. So 4 x 1 hour rides a week is enough. Add some walking in there or even better, running or hard paced riding and you’re going to melt fat.
Heart Rate Zones (and the walking-to-burn-fat myth)
You might have heard of the fat burning zone (60-70%MHR) where up to 85% of calories burnt are fat. People say walking is efficient and great for burning fat. And they’re right. If you walk a billion miles (OK not a billion, but a lot more than if you were running or riding etc). It’s a weight loss myth.
Problem is, we are not really concerned with relative amounts, we need to burn large absolute amounts.
This means that the higher the intensity exercise, the lower the percentage of energy metabolised from fat, BUT, the absolute (total) amount of fat calories burnt goes up.
Simple.
So, we need to get you moving. In the first few weeks, this won’t be a high intensity, but as you do more and more, and exercise longer, and increase intensity, your calorie burn will get bigger and bigger.
Read here for info about heart rate zones. The get a heart rate monitor and start training your heart.