Fastest way to burn FAT ? Swim or gymbike ?

it seems to me that there is this hype or so called thing about having your glycogen stores full.  People wake up in the morning thinking that they need to eat before their hour or 1.5 hour workout since this is what you would do before the race. 

For your training you don't need to do this. anything under 2 hours I don't eat or drink anything containing calories. I find it to not be necessary.  

so if you are thinking that you need to eat something while you are working out for 2 hours you don't. You don't need to make up for it either later on until you hit your desired weight goal.

This of course is all my opinion and I could be 100% wrong on this but it is how I do things.

I started a nutrition plan and I didn't lost much weight (from 168 to 162 pounds) , but I went from 18% body fat to 13% in about 6-8 weeks and now I am stable between 12-13% and my muscle body mass has increased.

I was only training 3-4 times a week, not much due to a peak in my work schedule, and it was mostly swimming and running, little biking since it is my strength. But the biggest change I made was on my nutrition, I was eating 1970 cal/day, eating 5 times a day, and consuming products with very little to no fat.

So my recommendation, as other members already posted, is that if you want to lose body fat, you need to start looking at your calorie intake (and what is on those calories, remember, little to non-fat products, if possible).

For some reason the decimal in front of the 35 has an odd placement in your post--it just looks like a weird formatting thing--and I didn't see it until I quoted you to respond with an incredulous "WHAT???" :)

To the OP--make sure you see that, or you could very quickly be miscalculating your caloric burn on the bike;)

I apologize if I got you to misunderstand this point, but a lot of people get obsessed with calorie intake rather to look at what those calories are made of (sugar, fat, carbs, protein, etc.). Getting the correct calorie intake coming from the right type of food, proved amazing to me.

What I meant to go for little to non-fat products was related to your food choices. For example, if you are going to eat protein, go for a lean steak, chicken or turkey rather than pork or lamb. Favor white fish over red fish, eat 1-2 times a week red fish, since it has other great benefits for you, although it is higher on fat. Dairy products? Skim milk over whole milk. Natural yogurt rather than yogurts containing processed fruits (more sugar), etc. Obviously, most products have fat on them and I didn't mean to stop eating everything that has fat, just make the "smarter" choice when deciding between two products, if your goal is to reduce your body fat.

I am not following any of those crazy/miraculous nutrition diets that people come up with that you have to stop eating carbs/fat/sugars, etc. in order to get X results. I just eat 5 times a week mixing dairy, veggies, fruit, carbs, and proteins and limiting processed food as much as possible. Now that I achieve my desired body fat level, I am increasing my calorie intake as well as the mix of carbs, protein, and lipids to help me sustain a higher training volume.

In order to lose weight, you are better off burning more calories.  If you do this through higher intensity or lower intensity is not as important (with the notable exception for the 'ancillary' considerations like injury risk, how it impacts your ability to maintain diet, etc.).  Of course, as others have also mentioned, managing intake is generally much more important in controlling weight than figuring out the best way to burn it off.

Calories in minus calories out. 

Even with swimming and biking you can make one or the other burn more calories in a set period of time based on intensity.  If you're doing easy back stroke swim sets versus pounding some serious hill sets on the bike, the bike will come out ahead.  Or vis versa, if you're strolling down the beach on your bike versus hammering 50m repeat sets at max effort you'll burn a lot more in the pool.

For me personally, when I want to cut fat/weight I run more because it's the highest calorie per hour burner in my activity regiment.  I then shoot to keep my intake around the same with healthy choices and target a 500-700 calorie deficit similar to what Shane mentioned.  Generally speaking it takes a deficit of between 2800 - 3800 calories to lose a pound of fat so if you follow the 500 calorie a day deficit you'll lose approximately a pound or more every week.
Anectdotally speaking when I try to run the 500 calorie daily deficit I usually lose around 2 lbs. a week.

I'll admit that I'm the furthest thing from an expert on this topic, but my understanding is that a calorie is a calorie and it doesn't matter what form it comes in.  Meaning if I only eat Oreo's and drink Mountain Dew, but keep my calories below 2000 calories a day I won't gain weight.
Now granted, there are other health/energy issues that will come up for sure because it's not a healthy diet by any means.  I'm just talking purely from a fat burning standpoint.

That being said, I completely agree with you about eating good food choices because we should be doing that anyways, but one has to be careful because you can get really fat eating healthy foods as well.  I chowed down a bag of almonds one day, not realizing they had over 2500 calories.  oops

I am not an expert at all either. I follow my sister's advice, who is a nutritionist. I should question her decisions more in order to learn all the details about nutrition, which is an unknown world to me. But since what she tells me to do works and I always have her an email/call away at no cost, I really don't absorb her knowledge as much as I should.

I am not sure what can happen to you regarding to your weight if you only eat less than 2000 cal/day from Oreo's and Mountain Dew, but I am sure those calories won't produce the same nutrients to your body than getting 2000 cal/day coming from a more balanced diet.

I may be wrong, but when I train/race, I am looking to intake a certain amount of calories to replenish certain nutrients that my body lost during exercise such as sodium, etc.. I do not intake calories for the sake of it, I make sure that what I eat has what my body needs. Same as for pre-race meals, you want them to have certain nutrients, which are different from post-race or long workouts meals (where you look for an specific carb to protein ratio, potassium, etc.).

Not true.  If you fail to feed your body nutrients and instead give it processed foods, chemicals, tons of sugar and crap it doesn't need, it will stop functioning optimally.......this includes your metabolism.  If you want your body to be an efficient, fat burning system you have to look behind just the number of calories you take in.

But by all means, give the Mountain Dew and Oreo diet a try for several weeks and report back to us what happens! 

I totally agree with this.  People in some of my group fitness class are obsessed with "how much did I burn??"  The truth is that it's all estimates anyway.  Unless you're hooked up to very fancy machines for your entire workout it's impossible to know how many calories your body is actually burning.

Plus, the boost your metabolism gets for the 1-2 day period AFTER a workout like anaerobic threshold intervals for example is where you're really gaining an advantage; not just the workout period of time itself.  Your goal is to make your body burn more calories 24/7 (i.e. a more efficient metabolism) if being lean is what you're after.

This debate often gets confused because people start mixing two different topics.  Noelle has is mostly correct in her last post, although it is absolutely true that if you take in fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight (which tuwood has correct in his post).  The problem goes back to the "burn".  Your body adapts and will burn more or less depending upon what you do with it (exercise) and what you fuel it with (diet). 

Say I burn 2000 calories per day doing normal daily activities and eating a normal (and balanced, consistent) 2000 cal diet. My weight holds steady.  Now assume I do nothing different other than replace all 2000 'balanced' cal with Oreos and MD.  It is unlikley my body will stay at the same 2000 cal burn rate and, therefore, my body weight will begin to change.  There is an amount of Oreos and MD that would hold my weight steady, but that amount may change as I keep the diet up and likley incur other less desirable health impacts.  You can't gain (or lose) weight unless calries in are greater (or less) than calories out.  But 'calories out' may change due to either exercise or diet (or both, of course).

That was pretty much my diet for 35 years.  lol 
It didn't work out too well because I took in way more calories than I expended. 

I'm really making more of a geek point than a reality one.  Obviously if I only ate & drank sugar my body would not be in very good condition to do a whole lot and I most certainly don't want anyone to add sugary foods to their diet to lose weight.

I was just making more of an academic argument that a calorie is a calorie.  A calorie is just a measure of energy and they're the same across all foods (good and bad).  Our body does one of two things with this energy, it either burns it or stores it.  The problem is with empty calories like sugar, is that our body doesn't get the vital nutrients it needs so we still crave other foods.  So, we eat the 2000 calories of oreo's and then pound down another 2000 calories of other food.  If nothing changes, then our body stores the extra 2000 calories as fat.  It doesn't just store the 2000 sugar calories as fat, it would probably burn the sugar ones if they were eaten first and store the others, but it really doesn't matter.

Sort of........what you're missing is that the empty sugar calorie not only leaves you wanting more calories because it lacks nutrients; it also basically stunts your metabolism.  The sugar, refined junk, chemicals, etc. in a food like an Oreo or soda kinda wreck your metabolism.  A wrecked metabolism will not burn as much body fat as well oiled machine metabolism.

So even if you do stick to your 2000 calories of cookies and soda, you will gain body fat.  The nature of the calorie you take in ABSOLUTELY affects how efficiently that calorie will or will not be burned.  People say a calorie is a calorie.  I say, depending on what type of calorie it is, you're body totally knows the difference.

According to my vast array of personal technology (Garmin SWIM watch and 305) , swimming burns about 400 cal/hour at my pace.  Biking burns close to, or even more than, 700 cal/hour.  I would go with biking. 

I love getting off the bike after a two-hour ride, and knowing that I am now entitled to 15 standard servings of ice cream!

Not sure I want to get into the debate above but the points I agree with (and lost 25 lbs following):

1. Most people do over estimate the number of calories burned and underestimate the number of calories taken in. For me, I did not factor in calories burned during exercise but I was not on an intense workout program. 

2.  Count calories while eating decent meals - I counted calories and went for a calorie deficit.  But I also started eating a healthier diet with a few more vegetables, less sweets, etc.  Yes an oreo and Mtn Dew diet will mess up your body but a generally healthy diet (without going to any extreme) and calorie counting should be more than enough to help lose weight.  Last thing I wanted to do was to examine every last bit of what my wife was cooking. 

3.  Don't take any of this to an extreme - Just decide what your diet should look like long term and make gradual, long term changes to get to your goal. 

x2

This is what I wanted to say, but you explained it a lot better than me! Numerically, one calorie is one calorie, but the nutritional value as well as the effect on your body may be very different depending on its nature.

X2!  Excellent Post!

During these debates people inevitably start mixing the topic of what's involved with increasing or decreasing your body mass (only calories in vs. calories out) and the topic of what it takes to perform well in athletics and develop or maintain a specific body composition (The quality of the calories consumed combined with calories in vs. calories out)

Everyone reading this thread should probably read JK's post.  Then read it a second time.  Just before they read it a third time.