The fat burning button on cardio machines is a gimmick. No particular “program” on cardio equipment burns more fat than the others; it’s how hard you work that determines fat expenditure.
Cardio machine options are merely configurations that make the product more appealing, and offer automatic variations in settings so that the user doesn’t have to keep resetting the console. That’s it.
To utilize the most bodyfat possible, choose the configuration that you like the best, then work your butt off. It doesn’t matter if the setting is “hill, ” “interval,” “cardio, ” “steady climb” or the “fat burn” setting.
Because if you perform high intensity interval training (HIIT) on any setting, you’ll flame the most bodyfat. When I’m on a stationary bike, I use the “hill” setting and do HIIT. I burn significantly more fat than if I were to just pedal steady state on the “fat burn” setting.
The reason cardio machines have a “fat burning zone” selection is because lower intensity, steady state movement burns a higher percentage of fat than does strenuous exertion or HIIT.
The key word is percentage. What you really want is the highest absolute amount of bodyfat burned, not percentage.
Intense cardio or HIIT burns substantially more calories than does steady state (“fat burning zone”) movement.
The percentage of calories from fat, in steady state or low intensity aerobics, is 50 percent on average. The percentage of calories burned from bodyfat, in HIIT or intense cardio, is 40 percent.
Because the total calorie usage in HIIT or intense exercise is much higher than in slower paced movement, 40 percent of that comes out to a higher amount of fat burned!
Not only that, but intense cardio, especially HIIT, leaves an afterburn: a faster resting metabolism for many hours after the exercise. Light intensity work (“fat burning zone”) does not produce any afterburn.
It’s not how many calories you use during the exercise that counts; it’s how much fat you expend afterwards, and HIIT can result in a 24-hour afterburn.
If light activity were the true fat burner, then sitting at a computer would melt off fat, since technically, this activity occurs in the “fat burning zone”!
Don’t let the fat burning button on cardio machines dupe you. Sure, you can use it all you want, but in order to expend lot of calories, do high intensity interval training on that program.
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