fat burning vs cardio?

Why am I not burning fat if my heart rate is higher (than the prescribed weight loss rate) during cardio?

Good question, I exercise like crazy, with my heart rate at 70-90 percent (doing intervals) and haven't been losing fat either. It's driving me crazy!

On the eliptical it says that my heart rate should be 118 to burn fat and 135 for cardio. I don't understand why I would not burn fat above 118...

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I think the reason that you may not be burning fat is because your cardio work out may be too high and if your heart rate is too high, your body is conditioned for endurance and at a lower heart rate...but not too low it is more efficient at buring the calories.  The details mess me up, but that's what I was told by my physiologist. :)
good luck
Brenda

The whole Fat Burning Zone is a myth. Your body constantly burns fat, carbs and glycogen all day in various ratios. So you are always burning at least a little fat.

Now, there is a HR zone where the percentage of fat burned is higher BUT that is only at the time of exercise. Later on in the day, usually at night, your body will rebalance your energy stores and burn fat from your fat stores to replace the glycogen that it burned during exercise when you exercise at a higher HR.

Also, if you burn enough calories during exercise, you can burn more fat during exercise even if you aren't in your "fat burning zone" because at some point, the percentage may be less but the absolute calories burned is more.

I.e., if you are burning 40% fat and you burn 400 calories in an hour, that's 160 calories from fat right there. If you burn 60% fat but you only burn 200 calories, that's only 120 from fat! That doesn't even take into account what happens later when fat is burned to replace the glycogen.

Bottom line: The way to burn the most fat is over a 24 hour period is to burn the most calories!

Awesome. Thank you!

My trainer was adamant about me not performing cardio and said I would eventually "earn it". He has ben concentrating me on strength training only for the past four months and I've seen steady %body fat loss and muscular gains. His theory is (and he's a RD as well) is that muscles burn fat all the time and cardio burns calories when you do cardio plus a little while after. He also suggests that because of our limited caloric intake, given a choice, we should expend our calories on strength training. 

Also, taking a krill based fish oil (pill based) has dropped my LDL, increased my HDL, and dropped my overall cholesterol significantly and made a noticable drop in my %body fat starting a little over a week after starting taking it twice a day. He is basing my workout regimine on my desire to do triathilons so I had assumed I would be working legs, arms, back and chest but that I would be doing cardio. He's a triathlete and he told me the weights are where we need to work for at least six months before hitting cardio to burn the fat and avoid muscle injury long term. So far it's working great for me. Hope that helps.

Gary

Thanks Gary
I do 30 minutes of cardio on the eliptical then strength training with the "fitfix" circuit. I wish I could afford a trainer just long enough to develop a routine.