Fat burning amongst endurance athletes

Fat burning is a very popular, and often used term amongst endurance athletes, but is it really important to burn fat and, if so how can it be best achieved.

The term fat burning refers to the ability to oxidise or burn fat and thus use fat. Instead of carbohydrate as a fuel .

For an Athlete, this is where fat burning is associated with weight loss

Factors affecting fat oxidisation.

Exercise intensity

in absolute terms, carbohydrate oxidization increases proportionally with exercise intensity, whereas the rate fat oxidization increases this decreases again at a higher exercise intensity.

So although it is often claimed that you have to exercise at low intensity to burn fat is not necessarily true.

Again exercise intensity may have importance for weight loss programs health-related exercise programs and endurance training.

The important fact is diet high in carbohydrate, suppress fat oxidisation. a Diet low in carbohydrates will result in high fat oxidisation.

Endurance athletes often used exercise with out breakfast as a way to increase the fat oxitative capacity of the muscle.

Nutritional supplements.

There are many nutrition supplements on the market that claim to increase fact oxidisation these supplements include caffeine, carnitine, guarana, asian ginseng, there are quite a few others, of the ones mentioned Green tea extract is found to increase fat oxidisation by up to 20% during exercise.

At present, the only proven way to increase fat oxidization during exercise is to perform regular physical activity.

Exercise training will up- regulate the enzymes of the fat oxidization pathways, increased blood flow etc. All of which will enable higher rates of fat oxidization.

higher fat oxidation rates during exercise Is generally reflective of good training status, the vast majority of nutrition supplements do not have any desired effects and currently the only effective way to increase fat oxidization is through exercise training. it is still not clear what the best training routine is to get the greatest improvements as each individual has different fat oxidation rates.

Be reminded oxidation rates on average, are very small during exercise so for weight loss in order to oxidise one KG of fat mass more then 33 hours of exercise would be needed.

For efficient burning of fat for energy, longer training, is  not so much the order of the day it could be more the intensity, and of course  you cannot go past the need to fuel the body with correct nutritional food sources that is the likes of fruit and vegetables ,seeds,nuts and good water.

Related posts:

1. endurance sport or idiocy
2. Exercise intensity and Weight loss
3. Fittness or sport specific