Wrong.

After reading this article, I guarantee you’ll develop a new respect for high-intensity cardio training for fat loss.

Low-intensity exercise is defined as working at a heart rate of about 60% to 65% of your maximum heart rate (which is equal to 220 - your age = maximum heart rate, thus if you are 20 years old, 220 - 20 = 200 max HR). High-intensity exercise is defined as working at about 75 to 85% or more of your maximum heart rate.

Using previous example for maximum heart rate (max HR=200), working at 60% of your max HR would be 120 beats per minute and 80% of that would be 160 beats per minute.

There are several reasons low-intensity exercise is normally recommended for fat loss.

1. It’s easy - In many cases people who are trying to lose fat don’t always feel energetic enough to do hard training due to caloric deficit (a.k.a. diet) that they are on. In these cases, just sticking to an exercise program can be hard enough, never mind making exercise itself challenging.

2. It’s low risk - A personal trainer generally can’t go wrong by recommending low-intensity exercise to clients. Even most out of shape person can usually do low-intensity cardio training safely. While this is certainly appropriate advice for novice trainers, it does not necessarily apply to more experienced trainer when it comes to effective training.

3. It burns a higher percentage of calories from fat - this is very true: exercising at a lower intensity does burn a higher percentage of calories from fat than high-intensity exercise. But, as I will explain, this does not necessarily mean you’re going to burn more fat.

Let’s crunch some numbers to show you exactly what I mean when I say high-intensity exercise burns more fat.

Low-intensity training burns about 50% fat for energy while high-intensity training burns about 40% fat for energy. This is not a huge difference.

Say, for example, walking for 20 minutes burns 100 calories. Then 50% of 100 calories is 50 fat-calories burned.

Now say 10 minutes of interval training at a high intensity burns 160 calories. Well, 40% of 160 calories is 64 fat-calories burned.

By doing high-intensity work, you’ve just burned 14 more fat calories in half time. Starting to sound good? There’s more...

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Low-intensity exercise only burns calories while you are actually exercising. That means moment you stop exercising, your caloric expenditure goes back down to nearly baseline levels. Within minutes, you’re not burning many more calories than if you hadn’t done anything at all.

The year was 1992. I had just finished a long cycle of weight gain whereupon I had moved my bodyweight up from about 150 pounds to about 215 pounds. And let me just tell you, it wasn’t all muscle!

I hadn’t been all that careful about my diet previously but I thought I knew pretty well what I was doing. It was time to lose some of that fat.

The first thing I did was make biggest mistake a dieter can make: in my focus of trying to eat only low fat foods, I unwittingly and drastically reduced amount of protein that I was eating.

The result? I lost weight and plenty of it. The problem was, I lost mostly muscle! I was smaller, weaker, lighter and nearly as fat as I was before. Not quite results I was looking for.

In retrospect, I know exactly what I did wrong and it’s something I’ll never do again.

I FORGOT ABOUT PROTEIN!

Protein is an extremely important nutrient whether your goal is to lose fat, gain muscle or just tone yourself up. It is main structural nutrient in your body, making up bulk of your muscles and organs. Protein is essential for proper hormone function and immune system health.

Most importantly, for our purposes, protein is used for building and repairing muscle tissue.

When you are trying to lose fat, you reduce your calories. Unfortunately, your body views fat stores as more precious than your muscle tissue and will tend to eat up muscle tissue before it goes to fat for energy. This physiological adaptation used to protect our ancestors from famine but works against us now.

This is very unfortunate because muscle tissue is a great calorie-burner. The more muscle you have, more calories you burn even when you’re doing absolutely nothing! Protecting your muscle tissue makes fat loss so much easier, it will amaze you. Not only that, it will help you keep that fat off permanently!

What can you do to protect your muscle tissue?

The first thing you can do is exercise. Exercise, especially resistance training, provides a stimulus for your body that sends it a signal saying "keep this muscle, you’re going to need it."

The second thing you can do is provide your body with enough protein. This can be in form of food or supplements.

Good food sources of protein include chicken, fish, eggs, lean meats, legumes (beans), soy, and dairy products. Protein supplements are derived from food sources but are concentrated for convenience and effectiveness.

How much protein do you need?

The standard recommendation for athletes is between 1.2 to 1.7 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (or 0.5 to 0.7 grams per pound of bodyweight per day), though some research indicates a ratio as high as 2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (0.9 grams per pound) is beneficial. This means if you weigh 150 pounds, you should try to eat between 75 and 105 grams and up to around 135 grams of protein per day.

Essentially, you should experiment with your protein intake to find out what works best for you. As far as importance in your supplement program goes, I would rank protein as next in importance to a good multi-vitamin.

When I made my first grand attempt at fat loss, I made mistake of neglecting protein and it cost me. Don’t make same mistake I did!

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Protein Is Crucial For Fat Loss! - Part 2

How to Maximize The Results You Get From Your Protein Powder. Timing Is Everything!

Whether it be for fat loss or muscle gain, I always recommend taking a good protein supplement. The reason for this is simple: it is a convenient way to get high-quality protein without excess calories.

Be aware, however, that in no way am I advocating that you live on protein powder (like dangerous Liquid Protein diets that used to be popular) alone. The key point to understand here is that a protein supplement is exactly what name suggests: a supplement. It should be taken in addition to a nutritious diet in order to achieve a certain purpose, in this case increased protein intake.

Protein powders and protein bars can also be used as meal replacements on occasion, especially when you are on go. They are far more nutritious than a fast food meal and more convenient.

The most popular and highest quality protein powder is whey protein. Whey is very digestable and is used efficiently in body.

You can maximize effects you get from your protein supplement simply by knowing exactly when to take it. Here is a list of when, why and how of effective protein supplementation, ranked in order of importance.

1. Immediately After A Workout

If you only take protein once per day, this is absolute best time to take it. Immediately after you finish your workout, your body needs raw materials to rebuild and recover with. If you don’t supply raw materials through eating, your body will break down muscle from elsewhere in your body in order to rebuild damaged areas. This is very counterproductive as you can well imagine.

By taking in some protein (20 to 30 grams or so) within minutes after exercise, you provide your body with raw materials it needs to recover without breaking down it’s own muscle tissue.

2. An Hour After A Workout

About an hour following a workout, your body has settled down from excitement and is ready to really start rebuilding. The protein that you took in immediately following workout has been metabolized and your body is looking for more. Another protein shake at this time is a good way to help speed recovery. Try to take in another 20 to 30 grams about an hour after working out.

3. First Thing In The Morning