Heart rate

Anyone else have problems keeping their heart rate consistent during a workout?

In doing a bit of research, it appears the ideal HR range for burning fat for me is 138-148bmp. I find this to be a really difficult target. When I run, my HR goes too high. When I walk it's too low. I can get into this zone on the treadmill but I have to jack the incline up to 12% (with a speed of 3mph). The problem I have with this is my back starts to hurt after 20 minutes at that incline. If I drop incline/increase speed my HR drops too low.

Anyone else have this issue?

 

I did when I ran with a monitor. It is hilly where I live, and I would have to semi-sprint downhill (hard on the shins, among other things) and walk up hills. I think it is much easier to use a monitor when biking, especially with long flat stretches. I ended up abandoning monitoring my heart rate, and just focusing on training structure.

S

P.S. That heart rates sounds high for fat burning. Are you young? My recollection is that to train you body to burn fat, you need LSD (long slow distance) done at a heart rate that is below the "aerobic zone".

 

I had the same issue years ago when I tried using a HR monitor. I think there is so much variability involved from person to person, that you probably need to adjust what you think you ideal HR is.

However, I'd just throw the thing away. If you want to burn fat, you simply need to eat less. Exercising alone wont do it. A typical male (yeah, I know you are female, but bear with me) will burn ~10 calories/minute doing moderate exercise. So if you do it for an hour, you will burn approx 600 calories (I think the number is less for females). But, it's really easy to replace that 600 calories with diet. Unless you exercise for several hours a day, exercise alone just wont cut it, whether you are in the "fat-burning" range or not.

Concentrate on eating less, and do the exercise part for fun and fitness.

 

This is almost totally true, for me anyway. I was "fat but fit", then had to go gluten free. Lost 25 pounds, courtesy of all of the junk that was now off limits.

But, there is something (I think) to training your body to burn fat for long distance endurance events (I'm talking multi-hour here). So for weight loss--good luck, but running in the "fat burning zone" didn't really matter. But it did increase my ability to run much farther.

 

You are overthinking it. Everybody's body has a different equilibrium. Yours will reach its equilibrium too, for any given combination of fitness level and exertion. As you get fitter, you will exert your body less and recover quicker, and your resting heart rate should drop lower too, to a point. Each session can still vary and it can still depend on a host of factors, such as dietary load, conversion rates, respiration rates, efficiency of various mechanisms such as oxygenation, fat metabolism, various chemical levels, what have you.

Just have a good workout, stay in a zone where you are challenged but not collapsing, and where breathing is difficult, but still possible.

Monitor your recovery times. If you are doing it right, they should decrease.

 

Thanks for the replies. Here's the background. I'm 40. I bought the HR monitor because I was having such trouble running. I wanted to train for a 5k (which I did my first one last weekend). Previous to the past few months, I would have trouble breathing and would get to feeling really sick when I ran. Bought the monitor and realized that I was frequently getting into the 170s and 180s. Just before the holidays I started working with a personal trainer to help me with the run. She helped me slow down and be able to run farther than I had before. She was very aware of my HR and would have me walk anytime it got over 162. She also thought I might be slightly hypoglycemic, so I have to eat before and after working out which has been really helpful in preventing me from feeling so horrible during or after a run.

I gained weight after I started working out so much. I was happy with my weight and size before I started all this and now want to lose 10-15 pounds to get back to my original weight/size. It was suggested to me that I do lighter exercise for longer periods to lose the extra weight. As for diet, I am using myfitnesspal.com and am consistently 1200-1500 calories a day and this feels reasonable to me.

So according to what I've read, here are my HR zones:
Light workout 126-137
Fat Burning 138-149
Aerobic 150-161
Anaerobic 162-173
Red line 174-185

my resting HR is 65

Someone had suggested that I may have gained weight because I was working out too much in an anaerobic state and stressed my body causing me to gain the weight. I don't know if that is even possible.

I was just curious if anyone else had similar experiences or insight.

 

No expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have read up a bit and to me it sounds like you are doing some things right, ie. monitoring heart rate and not straying into the over-exertion territory and eating before and after. As for the weight gain, I am not so sure you should be fixated on that. If you are exercising, and your exercise performance is improving, then your body is progressing in the right direction. Here are some things to think about.

1. Diet. Can you post what you eat, how much of it, when, etc.? What did you weight before? What is your height? What is your lifestyle (desk job?), leisure activities, how much do you sleep per day, etc. And, what do you eat and drink before and after running? Also, what is your fat %age. You can pm me if you want.

2. Build muscle. Do some weight training and do higher weights for lower reps with a good 3 days of recovery before coming back to the same exercises. The muscle should help with the loads you put on your body, and with increased muscle mass, you should burn more calories at rest. This should lower your fat component. Now, muscle weighs more than fat, so you may end up weighing even more. But, you should look leaner, and the body composition measurements should give you a good picture of how much fat you have lost. You should then be able to eat more than 1500 calories per day without gaining additional weight, and it should make you feel better. I suspect you are at the very minimum for what you need to be putting in your body, and it's crying out for more, and also hording fat because it is sensing near starvation. If you continue, you will fall sick, as it depresses your immunities significantly. And it will take you much longer than normal to recover from anything like a cold. Be good to your body and it will be good to you.

3. Give your body a break. Instead of just running, see if you can add in swimming and biking into the mix? Biking is a great way to lose weight, as it can be low intensity, and done for a long time without excessive fatigue (once you have mastered the hills). Biking is what I took up when I decided to be healthy...I lost weight quickly and it allowed me to progress into a bunch of other, much higher intensity activities such as soccer and running and martial arts. Biking was also phenomenal for lowering my resting heart rate, not that I cared about this. It just got pointed out to me when I went to the hospital for kidney stones (remember to drink plenty of water when you exercise--it's really important).

4. How long have you been at it? Take a long term perspective.

5. Give yourself a year. Don't rush it. You will see significant progress if you stay consistent. And you won't have to hurt yourself with radical short term goals. Small progress in small increments over the course of a year will lead to radical long term results, trust me.

 

I am not terribly worried about my weight because it's just 10 or so pounds and I know that I can lose that. I am more concerned with why I gained it in the first place especially since the only change was increasing my work out. To answer the other questions:
*What do I eat:
Breakfast - poached egg, low carb wheat toast (70 calories for 2 slices), grapefruit juice
Lunch - spinach/arugula salad with olives, walnuts croutons with balsamic dressing OR
turkey/swiss sandwich (again low carb wheat bread) with fruit or applesauce
Snack - 1/2 cup of plain yogurt with granola and flaxseed oil
Dinner - grilled chicken breast with vegetables OR grilled fajitas
Other snack - dried apricots or walnuts

Generally only drink water but have a gatorade once or twice a week, two glasses of wine a week, a Coke (prefer the sugar vs high fructose version that you can buy in the ethnic section of supermarket)
*I sell real estate (specifically horse farms) - so I walk a fair amount as well as being at my computer. I also have horses, so I spend time with them everyday doing chores, riding or grooming them.
* I sleep well (generally speaking) and get about 7 hours sleep per night.
*I'm 5'6'' and I'm a size 8 (if that means anything to you). I don't follow my weight on the scale per se, but follow how my clothes are fitting and how things look in the mirror. My clothes have just gotten tighter and I prefer to be on looser side of things. Again, it's not really about my weight but more about my fitness. Outside of tweaking things, I like my body size/shape. Lastly, I don't know my % of body fat.

I agree, besides I don't really like/believe in diets. I want to eat what I feel my body needs to feel it's best. I don't want to overthink it too much or villainize certain foods too much (this is bad or I can't eat that). Just be in moderation. I need to add in more strength training.

I don't think biking seems like a good fit for me right now because
a. I don't have a bike
b. I think that would take more time than I would like to commit
c. I live in an area of really lovely roads for driving but the bikers take their life into their own hands to travel these roads.

I enjoy a ZUMBA class once a week and would like to eventually do some martial arts. I just wanted to get the HR thing sorted out a bit more.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

 

there's lots of articles and studies showing High Intensity Training is more effective at 'burning fat' than lower HR zones, especially as you get fitter, and if you factor in any sort of return on time.

We've had this discussion on Fchat before, believe which theories you prefer.

In general, running will give you a higher HR than cycling, which gives a higher HR than swimming.

Everyone is very different, and the only scientific way to set your 'zones' is through lab testing. Everything else is guessing.