How to lose abdominal fat
How to lose abdoninal fat.
The basic advice that is given around the fitness camps is “Low carb and Cardio”. You’ll see every fitness guru, celeb trying to push their $10,000 cardio machine with this.
If you want to build strong core then you should read my earlier article on ab training
Lets start with debunking all the cardio myths.
Low Intensity cardio to lose stubborn fat
I get this question a lot in my email. People want to lose that extra stubborn fat. Often people have some preconcived ideas about cardio and the intensity training. Problem is not these ideas rather their sources. Often you’d read advice like this on one of the many health magazines out there…
CARDIO should be performed at a low intensity (under 120bpm heartrate). This will ensure that you use FAT as a fuelsource since as your heartrate increase, carbohydrates begin to become the preferred fuel of choice for the body. When on a low carb diet, you’re body will break down muscle and turn that into carbs. Remember, Fat CANNOT be changed into carbs. Therefore, the rule of cardio should be LONG DURATION, LOW INTENSITY
Now there is nothing wrong with this advice but it cannot be applied in every scenario. You cannot treat them as a general rule.
On the other hand, You’ll see trainers giving you the secret mantra of cardio (like I used to). There is only one way to lose weight and that is Short duration and Hard Intensity cardio. Exercises like Sprints are best.
Low intensity, long duration cardio and Short duration with High intensity cardio are 2 types that can be utilized as fat burning methods.
Now there is no golden rule for cardio.
It depends on your training, diet and your body type. Here’s few tips to chose right kind of cardio for you.
When to use Long Duration with low intensity Cardio :
If you are not calorie deficit diet (or low carb diets), then you should try long and slow cardio. Otherwise, you’ll cause a severe calorie deficit leading to muscle loss. High intensity and short duration cardio types will burn glycogen reserves in your body. Again that leads to burning your muscle mass.
If you are loading carbs regularly like every 2-3 days (a great advice which was given by Tom Venutoin his Burn the fat, feed the muscle book). You can have couple of Short/Hard workouts in a week.
So if you want to lose weigth and all the stubborn fat, now you know which type you should go with.
- If you are on restricted diet, Use Long, Slow cardio (treadmill for 20 min or above)
- If you are on Carb loading diets, Use Short/Hard cardio training (my favorite Sprints or better yet, hill sprints)
Who is responsible for Bad advice?
If you are not in marketing/sales, then you don’t know some of the truth about these health magazines. To increases advertisement revenues their editors edit the hell out of the articles sent by Experts. I can bet most of these editors rarely set their foot in Gym (forget training hard and maintaining good body)
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Feb 5th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
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