Resting Heart Rate

Your resting heart rate is a measurement that I use to determine your progress for weight loss. In the Metabolism Makeover, I talk about different indexes to determine your internal health and how it is helping or stopping your weight loss.

A healthy body can lose weight. An unhealthy body cannot.

The problem is that people do not know what to look at to determine their internal health.

Your resting heart rate is a very good index of fitness. Elite endurance athletes have very low resting heart rates.^1,2,3 I also noticed that a lot of clients who cannot lose weight also have high resting heart rates (above 75).

There is another fact about highly trained endurance athletes: It takes much more effort for them to raise it. An overweight person who is diabetic and tired will also generally have a heart rate of 80 – 90 BPM at rest!

Then you take an ultra-marathoner like Dean Karnazes and David Goggins who run 100 miles at a time. Dean actually runs a marathon length in the morning before work as his daily run. Sometimes he does it again after work. And, he has a full time job and a family with kids.⁴

His resting heart rate is between 30 and 40 BPM.

The same is true for Lance Armstrong, the seven-time winner of one of the toughest endurance races in the world – the Tour de France.⁵

Their nervous system has been trained and conditioned to use mainly fat for energy. For these long races, they have to use fat because it is an energy source that is more dense and will last longer. If they cannot use body fat, they will keep having to stop and eat something.

Their nervous system is also fine-tuned to use oxygen for the creation of energy. Their nervous system has to provide for the demands of an endurance race and lifestyle.

When oxygen is used to create energy, all nutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat) are used to create energy⁶. That includes body fat.

When oxygen is not used only sugar is used to create energy.

Your resting heart rate should be looked at over time. As I start a client on a program I have them report their resting heart rate every week. With the correct exercise, nutrition and lifestyle changes, my clients will start to see their resting heart rate go down over time.

This, together with other indicators, tell me about the changes occurring within the body. These changes are showing the true changes needed internally to make the body fat burning rather than fat storing. This is the difference. I am increasing their health internally and using these objective indexes to gauge it.

Metabolism Makeover

To learn more about my method and how you can use it to help your weight loss, it is called the Metabolism Makeover.