Heart rate

[Camy]

Hey there,
I had a chat with a friend who is (or says he is) doing weights to "bulk up". He told me that I needed my heart rate to be around 128 (very exact) to lose weight. That higher heart rate wouldn't help and would in fact stand in the way of my weight loss.
He also told me that sweating was bad ...

I don't really work out excessively, I do elliptical for 25 minutes 3 or so times a week, plus I swim 3 or so times a week, plus daily stretches and abs.
When I go on the elliptical and swimming my pulse goes up to 180. I am 23 years old, my resting pulse is around 70. I feel fine during and after exercising.
Should it be lower? Everything I studied so far (which is nto much) told me that it was important to exercise if you can, that if you can talk during it it is moderate exercise, and nobody ever warned about excessive sweat or a too high heart rate if no underlying condition is known.

So does anyone know, if he was just talking out of his ass as I think he was, or not??
Camy

 

[nol3afclover]

Hey there,
I had a chat with a friend who is (or says he is) doing weights to "bulk up". He told me that I needed my heart rate to be around 128 (very exact) to lose weight. That higher heart rate wouldn't help and would in fact stand in the way of my weight loss.
He also told me that sweating was bad ...

I don't really work out excessively, I do elliptical for 25 minutes 3 or so times a week, plus I swim 3 or so times a week, plus daily stretches and abs.
When I go on the elliptical and swimming my pulse goes up to 180. I am 23 years old, my resting pulse is around 70. I feel fine during and after exercising.
Should it be lower? Everything I studied so far (which is nto much) told me that it was important to exercise if you can, that if you can talk during it it is moderate exercise, and nobody ever warned about excessive sweat or a too high heart rate if no underlying condition is known.

So does anyone know, if he was just talking out of his ass as I think he was, or not??
Camy

Your friend is clueless.

1. Sweat is a function your body enables in order to cool the surface of your skin when temperature is increased due to heat and/or working out.

2. My heartrate has been all over the place and I've lost 52 lbs of fat so far.

3. Hard to say what you should do without knowing your stats and goals

 

[Gökhan1]

according to what i heard and experienced ;

higher values of bpm causes the body to use protein instead of fat so if you do your exercise with a higher bpm than your "fat burning heart rate zone" it can cause you to burn muscle.But i have once read exercising with higher heart rates burn more calories hence burn more fat but as a ratio ( fat / cal) it provides lover fat burn rates.So i think if you do your cardios around your spesific heart rate zone ( i think its around % 70 of your max heart rate ) you can burn fat easily - maybe not fast.

 

[Blancita]

First off, heart rates differ among people based on their age, gender and fitness level. So this magic 128 number has to be false because the numbers absolutely change based on gender and age. So if your exercise target heart rate is 128 at age 30, at age 50 it will be a lot lower to achieve that same exact level of exertion.

The question you ask is controversial, and experts differ greatly between theorizing that you should be staying in your "fat burning zone" for weight loss versus going as hard as possible to burn as many calories as possible for optimal weight loss. The theories differ for various reasons, one of which being that fat is directly burned at lower heart rates while at higher rates of exertion other forms of energy are accessed than the fat.

However, if you look at very fit people who exercise a lot (the extreme being pro athletes), you will note that they carry a lot less body fat than the person who hops on their elliptical a few times a week or who just walks a few miles every day for their exercise.

Working out at a higher heart rate increases your fitness level so it becomes far easier to exercise for much longer periods at higher intensities, thereby enabling you to burn ever more calories through exercise in shorter times. You may not have 2 hours for an extended walk, so you may need to up the intensity and do a shorter session to burn that same amount of calories.

Go on line and use one of the heart rate calculators to figure out your maximum HR for your age and the percentage of your maximum rate the 180 is. I went to this site , and it says 180 for you (with your resting HR and age) is 90% maximum HR. That is considered a very strenuous workout. So you'd probably be able to go longer if you pace yourself a bit better. But IMO there's no harm in working out hard and it WILL help your weight loss.