Fat Burning Exercises – Part One

There is a lot of information about fat burning exercises on the internet.  Unfortunately, most of the information is a bit misleading.  Typically, the information centers on whether you should be doing aerobic exercise to effectively burn your fat stores or whether you should be building muscle tissue to increase your metabolism to burn your extra fat!  The following quote from Adam Zickerman, author of Power of 10:  The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution provides a good example of this:

“Three extra pounds of lean muscle burns about 10,000 extra calories a month.  (It) burns as many calories as running 25 miles a week, or doing 25 aerobic workouts a month without leaving your couch.” 

This information, if accurate, would lead you to believe that all you have to do to lose body fat is put on an extra three pounds of lean muscle.  No need to pound the pavement or treadmill or go to your aerobic class.  Just workout with weights until you have gained those three pounds of muscle and you are set for life!

Having owned and operated one of the largest health club operations in the western suburbs of Chicago with a membership base of over 1500 members, I can tell you that the reality of this statement by Adam Zickerman does not play out in real life.  There is more involved in choosing the right fat burning exercises for losing weight.  The purpose of this 2-part article is to help you understand the whole equation so that you can designed an effective program to help you lose fat, maintain or increase muscle, improve your overall metabolism, and feel better about yourself and the changes you will see in the mirror.

The Science of Fat Burning Exercises

It seems that most promoters of fat burning exercises that are designed to create muscle mass use a common denominator of 100 calories.  For every one pound increase in muscle mass you will increase your overall metabolism by 100 calories.  I’m not exactly sure where this number originated from.  Maybe it’s from a 1997 study from the Journal of Applied Physiology that examined the metabolic changes of 26 sedentary men over an 18 week period.  During the first eight weeks, the men gained roughly 2.8 pounds of fat-free mass.  Their average daily metabolic rate increased by 263 calories per day for an average of 94 calories per pound. 

Looking good until you read the rest of the study!  Over the final 10 weeks of the study the men gained another 1.8 pounds of fat-free mass.  You would think there would be another increase in metabolic rate.  This didn’t happen.  There was no change in their metabolic rate nor was there any change in their sleeping metabolic rate.  This brought the average down to 57 calories per pound. 

In a 2002 study from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism women who gained 2.9 pounds of fat-free mass experienced an increase in their resting metabolic rate by an average of 60 calories per day or 21 calories per pound. 

Finally, Robert Wolfe, Ph.D. and Chief of Metabolism and Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Texas Medical Branch wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,

“. . . every 10-kilogram difference in lean mass translates to a difference in energy expenditure of 100 calories per day, assuming a constant rate of protein turnover.” 

When you convert kilograms of muscle to pounds, this equates to only a 5 calorie increase per pound of muscle. 

Given this wide variation in facts and figures, and from personal real life experience, I would favor the following chart in accurately portraying the daily metabolic rate for the following organs or tissues:

I’ve included these 5 items in this table because they will highlight some important truths about fat burning exercises:

• When compared to fat, muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain it. Building muscle through strength training exercises will increase your overall metabolism but not to the level that most websites promote.

• Even a modest increase in muscle tissue can have a positive effect in helping your loose fat over the course of a year. Using the above table, if you gained 3 pounds of lean muscle mass this would be a small increase of 18 calories per day and equal 6,570 calories for the year. Since there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat this would equate to a loss of approximately 2 pounds of fat (if your weight has been stable at the start of your program and you didn’t increase your caloric intake.)

• Note the number of calories your heart uses per pound. When you exercise your body you also exercise and strengthen your heart which can have a positive effect on helping you burn more calories.

• When you’re thinking about fat burning exercises don’t forget about your brain. Doing mental exercises to improve your brain function also helps you to burn calories.

• I’ve included the liver in the above chart because most people never really pay much attention to their liver except when it is not working properly. However, maintaining a healthy liver is critically important to your overall health and total caloric expenditure.

Although the increase in muscle mass can be beneficial, the type of fat burning exercises will have an even greater impact on losing fat.

We’ll examine this in part 2 of “Fat Burning Exercises!”

Blessing Lives Through Nitric Oxide Therapy!

Dan Hammer