Your Target Heart Rate
Below this information is a calculator for your target hear rate based on age.

Guidelines from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes Of Health(NIH), make the following recommendations about exercise to prevent weight gain:

• Consult your doctor and start slowly to avoid injury.

• If you have been inactive, start with 10 to 30 minutes of moderately intense activity, such as walking, three days a week.

• Build up to 30 to 45 minutes on most or all days of the week ·

• Reduce sedentary activities such as watching television.

• Build more activity into your day by parking farther from your destination, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, gardening, walking a dog, etc.

Schedule your physical activity a week in advance, budget the time to do it, and use a diary to record the amount of time you spend exercising. Record the type of activity as well as the intensity.

The goal of exercise is to burn fat, not sugar. Your body requires 8-9 times more oxygen to burn fat than to burn either protein or carbohydrate. Therefore, if you are huffing and puffing, you are in oxygen debt and you are not burning fat. Your body burns the most fat between 60% to no higher than 75% of your maximum heart rate (220 – your age)

Research is starting to provide a clearer picture of how to succeed at weight loss and keep it off. Some of the most detailed information comes from a national long-term study. The National Weight Control Registry contains information on 3,000 people who have lost 30 to 100 pounds (average, 60 pounds) and then kept their weight stable for at least one year (average, five years).

Target Heart Rate Calculator