Looking For Suggestions - Treadmill Fat Burning Workouts

I've been walking on my treadmill almost every day for the past 2 months. I've lost 18 LBS so far and have built quite a bit of muscle tone as well. My current workout is as follows:

1 Hour Total

5 min Warmup

etc, etc. 5 min Cooldown

I end up walking about 3.5 miles and burn roughly 615 calories. I do this atleast once a day sometimes twice.

Is there a better workout to burn fat while continuing to build muscle? I'm about maxed out in speed although I have done 3.6/3.9 a few times and I can handle more incline (7.0/8.0).

Any and all ideas are appreciated!

-Paul

Excellent progress! Congratulations.

I'm sure you get that '615' number from your treadmill, but I'm sorry to tell you that there's no way this is correct unless you are a very, very large person. Walking burns 85-100 calories per mile depending on your current condition and weight.

Don't think about 'burning fat', think obout 'burning calories'. As long as you are burning off more calories than you are consuming on average you will lose weight/fat.

You are already doing a mild form of interval training. How about kicking things up a notch by alternating between walking and jogging? Run for one minute, walk for two (for example).

Denise ACE and AFAA certified fitness instructor AFAA step certified

Walking uses a net of 0.75 Kcal/kg/mile, assuming you are on firm, level ground.

An 80 kg (176 lb) subject 'burns' 60 kcal walking 1 mile

running uses 1.5 kcal/kg/mile

Almost all exercise equipment caloric expenditure estmates are high and usually provide gross caloric expenditure, which includes the caloric cost of resting metabolism.

You are violating the laws of physics if you're implying that running a mile burns twice the calories of walking a mile. You are moving the same mass the same distance and even though running moves it faster, still takes the same amount of energy. (Since running is slightly less efficient than walking it does burn a little bit more, maybe 10% at very high speeds, 150 pound person, so I pretty much agree with Denise's range.

JAK

It's not just because of the elevated heart rate. If an elevated heart rate was all that's required to burn a lot of calories, we'd all get thin by sitting and watching scary movies or having all our friends sneak up on us and yell 'BOO!' at every opportunity.

Running is better than walking for burning calories because the rate at which you're doing work is higher. It's more time-efficient

I like this. The new fitness fad. Sit arround and watch scary movies. I can piture the informercial....

No. When you are anxious/scared/nervous, you are indeed pumping out adrenaline, but this does not release fatty acids. Fatty acids are instrumental to the aerobic energy pathway

I am a treadmill enthusiast as well, but I am into more cardiovascular fitness. Sounds like you are fit enough to do more advanced cardio. The most effective way to burn calories is relative to the intensity of your exercise. It used to be that scientists and doctors thought that walking is just as good as running. Not really. Walking even though beneficial does not benefit the heart as well as running.

If you are a moderately fit person, try working out at 70% to 75% heart capacity. I believe www.onhealth.com www.healthscout.com have a fitness calculator to find your target heart rate. Then when you are extremely fit, you can move up to 80%, and try to sustain it for 15 to 20 minutes. It does not matter if you are doing it on an incline or just increasing your speed. What matters is to get that heart rate up. I for one will incline about .5 degrees to match the wind resistance outside. But lately, the knees are saying no, so I just keep it at 0 degrees and just run faster. I need to go at 6 mi/hr on the treadmill to get my heart capacity at 80%. This is pretty fast for a 5'3' woman. Warm up is usually 4.5 mi/hr for 5 mins, gradually building it up 5.5 mi/hr for 15 mins. And then later during the last 10 minutes go up to 6.0 min/hr.

Lately, I have been having trouble getting my heart capacity up to 80% on the treadmill. This is not because I am incapable but I would have to advance to a very fast run to do this. So I switched over to Nordic Track. It sometimes happen when your cardio gets to efficient.