While looking for a source for the percentages of calories from fat during zone 2 training I ran across an article on heartzones.com that draws attention to an interesting fact about how the body gets energy during that zone. It prefers “dietary fat” over “body fat” because it is easier to get. This makes sense considering if there is fat available in the intestinal tract or blood stream that is much less work than digging it out of a fat store which replaces the content of a fat cell first with water while keeping the cell around incase more fat has to be stored later.
Why is this important? Because reducing the number of carbohydrates to get into a calorie deficit (best by changing the type of food eaten, not limiting it) is as important as making sure to reduce the amount of dietary fat in the daily menu.
Normally, I’m a big fan of including healthy fats in every meal since they are necessary and produce a sense of fullness more than without them. But I’m going to definitely be watching them more now. I usually like peanuts for a snack, and they are a healthy snack, but the fat in them might be working against me when I spend hours a day in zone two trying to just burn fat. It makes sense not to consume any fat for the last meal before a zone two workout so that I’m training my metabolism to get good converting body fat into ATP and not just whatever fat is in my bloodstream.
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