The percentages are what is misleading.

How does this apply to fat loss? Simple, the common misconception is that lower intensity exercise burns more fat. Your body has two sources of fuel for activity - stored fat and carbs. It is ALWAYS using both. Your body simply adjusts the mixture according to what is needed.

At lower intensity of activity, your body burns a higher percentage of calories from fat, but it may not burn more fat. If lower intensity workouts really do lead to the most fat loss, then the lowest intensity possible workout should be ideal. Well, lying on the couch is lowest form of activity (your body is still burning calories) you can do. Clearly, this is ridiculous.

At rest, your body burns fat and carbs in approximately the following amounts:

• Carbs = 47%
• Fats = 53%

At a moderately paced run (65% of VO2 Max or 6 mph), the following percentages of calories are from fat:

• Men = 20%
• Women = 42%

Clearly, it's better to be at rest if you want to burn more fat? Right? Hold on a minute.

At rest, we burn around 70 calories per hour (37 calories from fat). At our sample run of 6 mph, the calorie burn is as follows:

• Men = 794 calories per hour (794*20% = 158 calories from fat)
• Women = 680 calories per hour (680*42% = 286 calories from fat)

The question is, do you want to burn a higher percentage of fat or more fat calories? It's pretty clear that you should strive to burn more fat calories as this will reduce the amount of stored body fat you carry around. How can you use this in your workouts?

The least complicated way is to alternate days of interval training (varying intensity) with days of steady state training (consistent intensity). This will insure that you are spending ample time at the higher intensities while also allowing for some lower intensity training to keep from burning out and to keep your body guessing.

(Note: If you do the same calculation with walking for one hour, you will find that the pattern is the same. The calories burned from fat lies between our numbers for lying down and running. I used a ridiculous example of lying on a couch to more clearly illustrate the ridiculousness of thinking that lower intensity exercise burns more fat.