cardio for fat loss

Question
Hi Nick,
I'm 68kg, 1.7m, 29years old female, BF=25%
I'm going to the gym every weekday doing:
Mon + Thu: whole body workout + 20min cardio
Tue + Fri: 20' HIIT + 40 min steady state cardio
Wed: 1h steady state cardio

I have been going to the gym for the last 2 years, but I'm doing the following program since last August. My target is to lower my BF% by around 2%. However, my BF% has not changed at all and neither has my weight. So, I'm wordering what I am doing wrong...

My worry is the following:
When I'm doing steady state cardio, I have monitored my heart rate and it's usually around 165-170bpm. Does it have to be no more than 150-155bpm (=80%*max, where max for me is 220-29=191) for fat loss or it's fine if I can maintain a higher heart rate?

Just to let you know that my diet is very healthy with the right amount of carbs/protein/fat before and after exercise and during the day, so I suspect I'm doing something wrong with my training...

Many thanks,
A+

Answer
It seems that you may not be jolting your body enough to trigger fat loss. Those who exercise on treadmills or ellipticals, as opposed to those who do marathons, like myself, I have a lower body fat, but also it's difficult for me to keep a lot of muscle on my body, because I burn fat and muscle while I do long distance. Exercising works the same way - you can trigger fat loss, but you need to be tricky with it, and you are doing things right, you just need to pick up the 'body shock'. Diet is just as important, but it seems you are doing that well.

try intervals, not only will you burn calories while you're doing them, but your metabolism will be boosted enough to burn extra calories throughout the rest of the day.

Don't Think Intervals Will Work You Hard Enough? Try This!
I forget which magazine I got this idea from, but I'm willing to bet that I can have you panting and wheezing in 12 minutes. And in this 12 minutes you'll work your body harder than if you did 30 minutes or more of steady-state cardio of the same kind.

Not only will you feel that you worked harder immedietly after you finished, you may also notice it when you step on the scale if you do this often enough.

Are you ready?

This is literally not for the weak-hearted, overly obese or if you have joint problems.

I want you to jog for 4 minutes, this will be to get your body warmed up.
Once you hit that 4 minute mark I want you to sprint for 10 seconds. 10 seconds, that's it, come on you can do that tough guy!
As soon as the 10 seconds is up you can walk for 20 seconds.
But don't get too cozy, when that 20 seconds is up, you're going to be sprinting for another 10 seconds.
I want you to go back and forth like this for 4 minutes. So that's 8 sprinting intervals and 8 walking intervals.
And once you're done with that you can do a 4 minute jog as a cooldown.
Now let me know how you feel after just one 12 minute cardio session. Do you feel like you worked yourself more than your normal steady-state cardio? I thought so.

Now if that wasn't enough, you can actually do intervals with bodyweight exercises, weights and machines! You won't really be changing the speed, but you'll be doing different movements at different weights.

You just pick a few exercises you want to do, and do them all straight through back to back with no rest, pretty fast paced, then you can rest for a minute or two and start the circuit over again. With this type of workout, not only will you lose fat, you'll also be gaining muscle.

So you can see how well intervals work.


Nick Cifuentes
http://www.twitter.com/nickcifuentes
http://www.therunningfool.com