What Is Your Fat Burning Zone? (And Does It Really Matter?)

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Burning fat isn’t easy and it doesn’t help that there are a lot of misconceptions about how to burn the most fat during exercise. Yes, a “fat-burning zone” does exist but it’s misinterpreted.

More than anything, your body will respond to variety. The best way to burn fat and keep your body healthy is to work smarter, by understanding your heart rate zones.

Working out at different intensities has different consequences on your body so instead of worrying about your fat-burning zone, you’re better off understanding the different heart rate zones.

The Best Heart Rate Zone For Fat Loss

The fat-burning zone is a concept that when exercising at lower intensities for longer periods of time, you will burn more fat than glycogen at higher intensities.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, the best heart rate zone for fat loss is at every exercise heart rate zone. If you aren’t taking in oxygen, you aren’t burning fat.

And according to the running experts at Polar, “An effective running plan or workout plan will include different types of workouts with varying frequency, duration, and intensity spaced out so that you have time to recover. This means that some workouts should be short and intense, some long and light, and some can even be long and tough. It’s the variety that makes your workout regimen effective.”

To further explain, during exercise your body uses energy from two places: fat and glycogen stores. Glycogen is stored carbohydrates (converted sugars) in your muscles and liver.

So yes, your body does use more fat as fuel during lower-intensity exercise but you are also burning calories at a slower rate. You are going to have to walk all day long to burn up enough calories to make a difference if you are trying to lose weight.

Bottom line—exercising in your “fat-burning zone” is not the answer to losing fat.

The Warm-Up Zone

Ease into each workout by warming up first. At Get Healthy U, we often refer to the warm-up as a “dress rehearsal” for your workout. If you’re running, start by walking or jogging to warm up. If you’re doing a HIIT workout with plyometrics, start out with some light jumping jacks, squats, or other bodyweight movements.

What It Feels Like: Your warm-up zone matters. This is where you prepare your cardio-respiratory system along with your joints and connective tissue to exercise harder. Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of skipping a warm-up before the main event.

Benefits: Particularly as we age, the warm-up becomes a necessary part of preparing your body and heart for the workout. The warm-up zone:

Mobilizes your joints
Activates and prepares your muscles
Prevents injury during your workout
Promotes better blood flow and circulation
Prepares you mentally for your workout

Zone Two

Just beyond your warm-up is what is often referred to Zone 2 or your fat-burning zone. This is the lowest heart rate of all the exercise zones, and yes, it’s great for burning fat, but just as I stated above, not the most effective way to lose fat.

What It Feels Like: In the fat-burning zone, you’re working “comfortably.” You might sweat a little and breathe harder than usual, but you should feel as if you can sustain this activity for a long time. Think walking the dog or even some slow, steady-state work on a cardio machine. You will be able to breathe some through your nose and some through your mouth. When you are in the Fat Burning Zone you are still able to carry on a conversation while at work.

Benefits: Because you feel pretty good in this zone, you can stay here for a while. This means that you can go for a long time and burn fat. However, this is not your best zone for burning up enough calories to make a difference in your physical fitness and you don’t get the benefit of any afterburn! Don’t get me wrong, for beginners; this is a great place to start. But the myth that the fat-burning zone is the best place to lose fat is just that—a myth.

Related: 10-Minute Workout To Blast Fat

Aerobic Zone

What It Feels Like: The next level of exercise occurs is your aerobic zone, sometimes called Zone 3. This zone will have you working hard enough to feel the need to breathe mostly through your mouth; referred to as “comfortably hard.” You will be able to talk during this zone, but only in short phrases or words. Carrying on a full-blown conversation will not happen.

Benefits: The calories burned in the Aerobic Zone are more of an even split between your fat stores and the sugar that is readily available. You will burn some of each. Though you are not burning as many fat calories as a percentage, you will be burning more calories overall. Plus, working in the aerobic zone really gets your heart pumping, so it’s great for keeping your heart healthy.

Anaerobic Zone

What It Feels Like To Cross Over Your Anaerobic Threshold:

This is often referred to as Zone 4 and/or 5. When you are working in the anaerobic territory you are panting, laboring your breath, unable to talk, and reaching a maximum heart rate. It feels like an all-out sprint. It is impossible to spend much time here—generally less than a minute. You usually spend closer to 20-30 seconds at a time here.

Benefits of working out in the Anaerobic heart rate zone:

The obvious downside to the anaerobic zone is the limited time you can spend in it. 30-seconds isn’t much of a workout. However, that is not the purpose of this zone. You use this for interval training and the benefits are actually huge. A few short anaerobic intervals (like those you would find in HIIT training) can make bigger changes to your fitness level than anything else you do. Anaerobic intervals push your fat and aerobic zones to be bigger and zap tons of calories in record time.

This zone reaps the benefit of burning calories in your body long after the workout is finished. That’s where the afterburn effect kicks in—also known as EPOC. Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (E.P.O.C) means that after a hard high-intensity workout with high heart rates, your body will continue to burn more calories than it would after a lower impact, steady-state exercise, such as walking or jogging.

As a personal trainer, this is what I would recommend you include 2 days a week of anaerobic zone workouts. This is setting you up to burn more calories. It’s your metabolism’s little helper

Start with these Interval workouts:

Upper Body HIIT Workout

10-Minute Interval Workout To Lose Weight

Low-Intensity Vs. High-Intensity Workouts

So what’s the best zone to work out in? Ever had one of those trick multiple choice questions on a test where the answer is “all of the above?” You guessed it—all of them!

Just like working all of your different muscles makes for a more balanced and well-rounded body, working in different training zones gives you a more balanced level of fitness overall: one that helps you burn fat, and calories, and also keeps your heart healthy.

You might benefit from looking at this study done by the folks at www.builtlean.com that helps outline the different benefits we just went over of each training zone.

Here’s the breakdown from 30 minutes of exercise for a low vs. high-intensity group.