Go without carbs and your body will be forced to resort to fat stores, says training consultant Alice Round
Don’t blame yourself – it does sound good. Old-school thinking says that keeping your heart rate at a certain level will cause your body to forget about burning the carbs you’ve eaten and chow into your body fat. But the link is about as literal as drinking Skinny Milk to get, well, skinny.
In reality, the type of fuel you burn comes back to the type of fuel you eat, training consultant Alice Round says. “Yes there are three different energy systems, which utilise different energy sources for periods of time, but if you eat a lot of carbs, you will use this first for fuel during exercise.”
Go without the spud, however, and your body will be forced to resort to fat stores because in the absence of glycogen stores to provide working energy, your body has to create glucose through other processes, Round says. Pair this with 20 minutes of high intensity exercise (the fat burning zone would have you sweating it out for double the time… waste, much?). Top it all off by mixing up your workouts and overhauling your regimen every three to six weeks. “Otherwise your body becomes more efficient and uses less calories for the same exercises.”
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