Creating an Energy Deficit Through Aerobic Exercise

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You must create an energy deficit in order to burn body fat.

A heart rate watch will keep track of the amount of calories you are burning during exercise.

If you decide to purchase a heart rate watch…

Ensure that it counts the calories you are burning during exercise.

In order to burn a pound of fat per week, you need to create a deficit of around 3500 calories per week.

Focus on Burning 1-Pound of Pure Body Fat Per Week

A full pound of pure body fat lost each week is great progress. Focus on one pound of pure fat loss each week and hope you get even more than that… which is entirely possible with the WLC System.

One-pound of body fat equates to a 500 calorie average deficit per day for 7 days during the one week period.

For example, let's say it takes 3000 calories to maintain your current body weight and you're eating 3000 calories per day.

You would not burn fat or lose weight because your energy levels are balanced. You are taking in the exact amount that you are burning. In order to lose fat, you would need to burn an average of 500 calories per day thru cardiovascular exercise and weight lifting.

This will equate to 1 pound of fat loss, if you follow the guidelines of the program. If you stray from the guidelines of the program, a larger amount of that weight loss can turn out to be muscle.

A Typical WLC System Cardio Session

A good session of medium intensity cardio will burn around 300 to 600 calories depending on your heart rate throughout the exercise and the duration.

You can use your heart rate watch along with your diet tracking data to make intelligent decisions each week to continue making progress in fat loss.

For example, let's say you lost 0.8 pounds of fat last week and your goal happens to be 1 pound of fat loss per week. This means you need to create a larger deficit that happens to be around 700 calories more than your current deficit.

There's no need to decrease calories because doing so decreases your metabolism. You want your metabolism to stay high at all times.

Simply add a few sessions of cardio to create a slightly larger deficit.

Most of us will burn about 10 to 15 calories per minute during medium intensity cardiovascular exercise.

Assuming your diet, weight lifting, and other activity remains constant, you will need to add about 45 to 70 minutes of cardio to your program for the upcoming week.

Another method is just a slight decrease in calories using the calorie cycling method combined with a little more cardio per session.

Monitor the calories burned through the use of your heart rate watch, or use the estimate of 10 to 15 calories burned per minute. When you burn 700 more calories than the previous week, your fat loss should improve and be closer to the 1 pound mark.

Why is it 1-Pound of Fat Loss per Week?

Why 1 pound of fat loss per week? This is the optimal rate of fat loss for the vast majority of people.

Any more than that, and muscle will be lost. One pound per week of fat loss allows you to keep all of your muscle mass.

This doesn't mean YOUR optimal fat loss rate isn't more than 1 pound per week, though. It's up to you to experiment using our guidelines.

If you were performing just 3 cardio sessions at 30 minutes each, you can add duration to those sessions and add more sessions to reach that 70 minute mark.

Your other option is to increase the intensity of the cardio to the higher end of the medium intensity range. This will burn more calories per minute and help you reach that deficit with less exercise.

You'll want to stay in the medium intensity range to keep the primary energy source as fat. When you delve into the high intensity ranges remember that you're shifting the energy source towards protein. And you don't want that.

Keep Track of Your Cardio Sessions with a Heart Rate Watch

By keeping track of your cardio stats such as heart rate and calories burned, you can make intelligent decisions each week to ensure you make continuous progress.

In this program, you'll start out with a minimal amount of cardio and only increase the cardio to burn more calories when needed.

If muscle building is your goal, you'll keep cardio at a minimum. If fat loss is your goal, you will increase cardio when needed to continue fat loss progress.

Some people will need to increase the cardio every week while others may lose fat very quickly without adding very much cardio at all… that's just the differences in our bodies — none of us are the same.

Keep reading here at WLC, and you'll learn everything you need to know.