Cutting

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">yes and muscle look at marathon runners</div>I hope you understand that I was referring to the fact that I don't believe that the body utilizes energy in that manner.

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">You seem to be contradicting yourself here.</div>There is no contradiction there.  Your body is going to respond to how you treat it.  If you're doing light cardio it's going to burn calories differently than if you do intense cardio.  When you go all out, it just knows that it needs energy now.  It has no idea that you're going to stop in a couple of minutes so it mobilises proteins in order to start breaking them down irregardless of the fact that you don't really need their energy (yet).

You mentioned your body adapting to the cardio you do.  If you start doing cardio at level 1 on a machine, eventually your body will adapt and level 1 won't stress your body nearly as much as it once did.  So you turn up the level a little.  Now your body starts to adapt to it as it becomes more and more &quot;conditioned&quot;.  You keep doing this and something that used to be intense isn't anymore.  It's not that you become used to high intensity, it's that high intensity becomes easier if it is repeated regularly.

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">but I find it hard to believe that the body will begin to eat itself after 4 to 12 minutes. Seems a lot more likely after 35, 45 or 50 minutes, unless you are conditioned -- reprogrammed -- to exercise in that way. </div>Your body burns the stuff (glycogen, fat, protein) for energy (calories).  If you are exercising at low intensity, you don't need as much energy because you aren't spending it as quickly as you are with the high intensity cardio and therefore won't tap into the muscle as quickly.

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I care more about the percentage..... at the end of the day, I can control the deficit/surplus of calories not only by exercising but also with my nutrition,.... on the other hand I don't have that many weapons at my disposal for the percentage of fat to be burned..... so, I try to burn as much percentage as possible of fat and control the surplus/deficit with the nutrition..... does that make sense at all ??.... am I missing something</div>That's how I see it as well.

If I can choose to burn 200 calories using fat as the source by going intense or I can burn 500 calories using fat as the source by going slow and long...

Well, I guess that depends on my goals.  As far as cutting is concerned, the goal is to lose the fat and keep the muscle.  Going slow and and burning more fat is a better option for me.  I may burn fewer calories overall and my weight won't change much, but my composition will.

The amount of calories consumed vs. the amount of calories burned will determine whether you gain or lose weight.  But what you eat and how you exercise will determine where that loss/gain comes from/is.
 
From what I understand cardio increases cortisol when the liver is depleted. A 15 min session of HIIT may well be done without depleting completly the liver, since the liver can store 450 cal of glycogen, and the muscles like 1500, whithout counting blood glucose.

Take a cyclist for example. Measure his LBM before and after 3h of cycling. If he is given enough energy during his effort ( energy drinks.. ) he will not lose muscle. Otherwise all those cyclists who do the Tour de France would lose all their muscles!

Also, remember that study that showed that each calories burnt with HIIT causes 9x more subcutaneous fat loss than moderate cardio. This means that each calorie burnt with HIIT would have to cause 9x more muscle loss than a calorie burnt with moderate cardio, which is highly doubtful, in order to cause the same loss of muscle.

But, like I said before, the limit with HIIT is the joints and tendons especialy when you already lift weights. The question is more how do you manage to do a lot of it..
 
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">If I can choose to burn 200 calories using fat as the source by going intense or I can burn 500 calories using fat as the source by going slow and long...</div>

Of course the research shows that the you're better off, from a fat loss perspective, doing the 200 calorie burning workout than the 500 calorie workout. Since the body contains enough glycogen to support high intensity intervals for 8 to 10 nimutes, I still don't see catabolism being a problem.

Personally, I do one HITT (15 minutes), one 20 - 30 minute moderate cardio, and one Tabata workout each week, on my off days, in that order.
 
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