Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: Overweight and obesity, as physical disorders, can threaten health in different ways. Regular exercise (training) is defined as an improving factor for body composition and cardiorespiratory fitness in overweight and obese people. However, the intensity of exercise, as one of the training principles, for attaining the highest fat burning effect, is still challenged. This paper reviewed the studies that have investigated the benefits of different intensities of exercise on fat burning.
Methods: This paper provides an overview of the researches that have investigated the effects of exercise with intensity of FATmax, disregard the date of published material. Journals with impact factor ≥1 have been documented.
Results: According to most of the studies, FATmax presents an intensity of exercise that the greatest fat metabolism rate occurred in which varies and is measurable in different individuals. According to the results of investigations, FATmax occurs between the range of 39 to 65%VO2max and can be affected by genetics, gender, body composition, physical activity level and diet. It can be helpful to determine FATmax intensity, before exercise prescribing in both healthy and unhealthy individuals. So, the trainer could be aware of metabolic situation of client for better control and reaching the training goal. Although this method of practice is effective, there are a lot of questions in this regard. Whether this type of training is preferred to other exercise protocols, such as high intensity interval training or not, is still unclear and needs more research.
Conclusion: The literature review showed that determining the FATmax intensity can lead to the optimal training design to help effective fat burning. However, many of investigations in this regard are performed on healthy and mild overweight people. This review showed that there is not enough evidence to prefer the FATmax training to other exercise protocols. More studies are needed in different groups to compare this type of training with others, with certain determination of biologic pathways in FATmax training.