The best way to lose weight

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By Dr. Davide Marciano

Even today we are convinced that long and exhausting hours of running, combined with a certain heart rate, are the best way to lose weight.

Unfortunately, the information that comes to us, especially from gyms and the media, is exceedingly misleading; however, if we only wanted to apply a bit of sound science to all this, we would be perfectly able to disprove many of these popular sayings.

Let's start with some formulas designed in the physiological field to calculate the caloric / lipid expenditure of running and walking:

STROKE

Energy expenditure : 0.9 x Km traveled x Kg of body weight

Lipid expenditure : (Kg of body weight x Km traveled) / 20

WALK

Energy expenditure : 0.5 x Km traveled x Kg of body weight

Lipid expenditure : (Kg of body weight x Km traveled) / 35

If, for example, we took a person of 70 kg (this weight should correspond to the lean mass and not the total weight) that runs, running, 10 km a day (which is quite tiring) we would have:

Energy expenditure : 0.9 x 10 x 70 = 630 calories

Lipid expenditure : (10 x 70) / 20 = 35 g of fat

Therefore, evaluating the fact that we have used as an example a fairly muscular person (70 kg of lean mass are many), who completes a quarter of a marathon a day (10 Km), and confirming with certainty that these are formulas tested on athletes (which scientific studies have shown that it is better to use lipids as an energy substrate), in our example we have a fat consumption of about 30 - 35g.

Now the question: "Do you know how many calories contains 1 kg of fat?" About 7000 calories, or 800g of fat.

Now, returning to our subject / example, we can easily calculate that to lose 1 kg of pure fat will have to travel about 240 km, or 24 days of consecutive training (if he can always travel 10 km a day). This conclusion leads us to learn that running does not produce a large consumption of body fat. To this we can add the maximum heart rate, which according to the aforementioned theories, to burn mainly fat must remain between 60-70% of the maximum heart rate.

However, things are not exactly this way; in fact, we can say that the heart rate is inversely proportional to the consumption of fat in percentage. That's right, the less the heart beats, the more our body uses lipids as an energy source; for example, when we sleep our body mainly uses fats for energy purposes.

Furthermore, it must be said that the daily energy expenditure comes:

60% of basal metabolism,

10% from the specific dynamic action of food

and only 30% from physical activity

Physical activity, therefore, affects the daily caloric expenditure only by 30%, nevertheless we continue to give it an exaggerated importance.

At this point you will ask: "So the best way to lose weight is based on leisure and rest?"

Of course not!

Physical activity is very important for weight loss and more, but even more important is the type of activity that takes place. We must therefore understand science and use it to our advantage. If it teaches us that 60% of daily caloric expenditure comes from basal metabolism we will do something very clever looking for a way to accelerate it and go on burning more fat (especially at rest).

The basal metabolic rate is directly proportional to the muscle mass, so if we find an activity that induces the increase we found the magic formula of weight loss.

In-depth article "the best way to lose weight":

»High intensity training for weight loss

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»Heart rate for weight loss