Your fat burning heart rate is an indicator of how quickly your heart needs to beat every minute to reach your body’s best calorie usage.  Just because your heart is racing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see a lower number on the bathroom scale. After all, your heartbeats will pick up for many reasons, including stress and anxiety.  Moreover, you’ll need to keep up that level for a sustained amount of time to burn through enough calories to make a measurable difference. That said, it is an indicator that can help you to ensure you’re pushing your workouts to the right intensity to reach your goals.

Does Your Fat Burning Heart Rate Mean You’ll Lose Weight?

If you’re looking to lose weight or to prevent weight gain (or both!), then knowing your fat burning heart rate can help you to know you’re getting the most out of your workouts.  The key is to remember that this is just one measure, and that there is a lot more that goes into healthy exercise than the rapidity of your heartbeats.  Remember that there is a difference between burning fat and actually losing weight.

Achieving your ideal fat burning heart rate during your workout and maintaining it for a good amount of time will help you to know that you’re pushing yourself to the intensity you need to be able to burn through the maximum number of calories or body fat possible from your workout. Still, it’s important to focus on overall body fitness and on form to prevent injury for the best long-term results and overall health.

At the same time, you need to remind yourself that you’ll only lose weight from achieving your fat burning heart rate during your workout if you’re also eating properly for your goal. After all, if you want to lose weight and you’re eating 3,500 calories per day but burning only 2,000, then you may have achieved a great fat burning heart rate and a powerful workout, but you’ll still risk gaining weight because you’re consuming far more than you’re burning.  Remember that no effective weight loss strategy involves only a single factor.

The Calculation

Knowing your fat burning heart rate is an individual thing. It depends on many factors including your age, sex, fitness level, and more. Your heart rate when you’re sitting still or lying down – your resting heart rate – is likely between 60 to 100 beats per minute, though that could be different if you are an extremely active person or if you have a medical condition.

When you start to exercise, those heartbeats start picking up speed to ensure that oxygen is being properly delivered to your muscles and other cells throughout your body.

Calculating your fat burning heart rate means that you first need to know your maximum heart rate.  Your maximum is calculated by subtracting your age from 220.  So, if you’re 30 years old, your maximum would be 190 beats per minute.  From there, you can calculate the fat burning zone.  This usually involves a range with upper and lower limits.  The upper limit is 70 percent of the maximum while the lower range is 50 percent.  Therefore, on average, a 30-year-old’s range would be between 50 percent of 190 and 70 percent of 190 beats per minute.