Get health tips from Dr. Berg's newsletter!
A very interesting yet rarely understood fact of exercise is that the calories burned during exercise are very few. For example, it would take 1 hour of golfing (walking without a cart) to burn several teaspoons of Thousand Island dressing. However, the delayed fat-burning effects from this exercise are quite significant. You experience most of the fat burning 14 to 48 hours after the exercise—BUT only if certain things are in place. Burning this fat depends on what you eat during this time, how much stress you experience, whether you have pain or not, how much you sleep, and if you are avoiding sugar completely. This is why you don’t have to pay too much attention to calories, only to hormones; if you do this, you’ll be much more successful.
Eating carbohydrates before, during or after you exercise will prevent the fat-burning effects.
You have probably been told, “Eat everything in moderation,” right? This is bad advice. Eating sugar even in small amounts will keep you out of fat burning. Eat protein at least 75 minutes before exercising—but don’t stuff yourself. It is okay to eat protein after the exercise as well. Exercise inhibits the fat-making and fat-storing hormone insulin. Intense anaerobic (higher-pulse-rate or resistance-type) exercise triggers several fat-burning hormones—growth hormone, testosterone, adrenaline and glucagon. However, if the adrenal glands are fatigued or exhausted, intense exercise can prevent weight loss because the stress glands are being overtaxed. If your adrenals are stressed, only do light aerobics (low-pulse-rate endurance-type), if any at all, until you get your energy back and your sleep is improved.
Anaerobic exercise: Higher-pulse-rate (greater than 145 beats per minute), intense resistance-type.
Aerobic exercise: Low-pulse-rate (less than 130 beats per minute) endurance-type.
It’s true that the low-pulse-rate (aerobic) exercise burns fat during the time you are doing it, but only after the first 20 to 30 minutes. So if you exercise 40 minutes per day, this is only 10 minutes of fat burning—very insignificant. On the other hand, the intense, high-pulse-rate (anaerobic) exercise does not burn fat during the exercise, but triggers fat-burning hormones 14 to 48 hours later.
During the exercise, you are tearing down muscle tissue and causing cortisol to help break down muscle. Then the growth hormone comes in to repair and rebuild it. The fat-burning benefits occur in the rest period when the body is building back up.
config
logs
8134.8 KB
