AEROBICS: Exercise LESS to Lose MORE

In researching my upcoming book, Stop the Diet Rollercoaster, I'm Getting Off!, I came across several papers claiming that, while exercise is essential for maintaining weight loss, it is neither effective nor necessary for achieving weight loss. According to the authors of these papers, the number of calories burned during exercise - even lengthy exercise - just isn’t enough to result in weight loss.

If you are one of the many people who have spent endless hours in the gym slogging through 30-60 minutes or more a day of medium-intensity workouts without any apparent effect on that roll of fat around your middle you’ll probably agree with this assessment.

But it’s wrong.

The Truth About Exercise and Weight Loss

The truth is that exercise is essential both for losing excess body fat and for retaining lean tissue including both muscle and bone. If your exercise routine hasn’t been effective it’s most likely because you’ve been exercising incorrectly and – this will probably come as a shock to you - because you’ve been exercising too much.

The Thirty Minute Myth

The often-cited recommendation for 30-60 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic workouts comes from the observation that the body burns the most fat when it is working at a moderate intensity. So, the thinking is that, to lose weight, you should work out for as long as possible at this level of intensity.

But, while it is true that your body burns more fat at a moderately intense level of exercise while you are exercising, your body doesn’t actually change during exercise. It changes after you exercise as it adapts to prepare for the next time you will stress it in the same fashion. And long-duration, moderately intense exercise actually encourages your body to store fat.

Remember, your body doesn’t know anything about weight loss. It only knows about survival. When you burn fat during exercise you are telling it that, to survive, it needs to maintain its fat stores so it will have enough to burn during the next exercise session. In this way, moderately intense endurance exercise actually encourages fat storage.

This adaptive mechanism is so strong that, when presented with frequent bouts of moderately intense, high endurance exercise your body will actually use its muscle for fuel so it can preserve fat!

Fortunately, there is a much more effective way to lose fat than by working out at moderate intensity for prolonged periods of time. That is to work out at high intensity for short periods of time. In other words, to do “interval” training.

Why Interval Training Works

To understand why short bursts of high-intensity exercise are more effective at reducing body fat than lengthier moderate-intensity workouts, you need to realize that your body stores energy in two different forms: fat and glycogen.

Glycogen is stored in the liver and in muscle tissue and is readily converted to glucose or blood sugar, whereas fat takes a while to metabolize. As a result, when you exercise intensely, but only for a brief period of time, glycogen is the fuel source that is used rather than fat.

Just as using fat for fuel during exercise sends a message to your body to conserve fat for its next exercise session, using glycogen to fuel your exercise session sends a signal to your body to store more of its energy as glycogen. In this way, short duration high intensity exercise encourages your body to burn its fat stores.

Supporting Studies

Several scientific studies have demonstrated the enhanced fat burning effect of interval training.1-4

One such study conducted at Colorado State University found that people who exercised 20 minutes in sets of 2-minute intervals with a minute of rest in between increased their resting metabolic rate by 4% and their resting fat oxidation - a measure of how much fat is being “burned” - by a whopping 62%! And these people were still burning fat 16 hours after their actual exercise session ended!

In another study comparing long-duration exercise with short-duration interval training, researchers at the University of Quebec found that, while the long-duration exercisers burned more calories, those who engaged in short-duration interval training lost more fat. In fact, for every calorie burned, the interval training group lost nine times more fat!

And, for those of us who aren’t into marathon exercise sessions, here’s the really good news: it takes very little time to get the fat burning effect of interval training. A study at Stanford University showed that a mere 10 minutes of exercise was enough to do the trick!

Improve Your Cardio Fitness: Your Heart on Interval Training

In case you’re thinking that you need those lengthy “cardio” workouts for heart health, you should know that studies have shown that short-duration high-intensity interval training is actually better for your heart and improves cardiovascular endurance more rapidly than long-duration exercise.

In one such study, college-aged men and women were asked to perform interval training consisting of 30 second sprints interspersed with 4 minutes of rest. After just two weeks, 75% of the participants had doubled their endurance. This effect on endurance was particularly impressive because the participants were young and already quite fit.

In another study conducted at Harvard University, people who performed high-intensity exercise had a lower risk of death than those who performed low-intensity exercise.5

How To Start Interval Training

To burn the most fat and improve your cardiovascular health you want to do interval training. This type of training consists of short bouts of high intensity exercise followed by periods of recovery. You don’t want to stop exercising completely during the recovery periods, just slow down and allow your heart rate to return to more normal levels, and then increase the intensity of your exercise again.

Because your sessions will be short, I recommend purchasing a piece of aerobic exercise equipment such as a strider, stationary bike or treadmill and having it in your home and or office. (I prefer a strider because it involves the upper as well as the lower body which helps raise the intensity level.)

If you dislike formal exercise, you might also consider investing in a mini-trampoline. Then just put on some music, hop on the trampoline - and dance! You can increase the intensity of your dance workout either by adding some light hand weights, or by stepping up your tempo.

Begin your exercise program slowly with a 5 minute session once or twice a day. During those 5 minute session, try to do two or three 30-second intervals of high intensity exercise and then drop back down to a moderate intensity to recover. After a week or so, you can begin increasing your sessions from 5 to 10 minutes and then increase the high intensity intervals from 30 seconds to 1 minute, and so on. Do these sessions on a daily basis or intersperse them with strength training.

For a more formal schedule of progressive interval training see “The Doctor’s Heart Cure: Beyond the Modern Myths of Diet and Exercise” by Al Sears M.D. (See below)

NOTE: Intense exercise can precipitate heart attacks in those who have coronary arterial disease. If you have heart disease, chest pain or are over 50 years of age, by all means check with your physician before starting an interval training program!

PLEASE let me know what you think about this posting. Leave your comments on this site by clicking on the comments button at the bottom of this page or E-MAIL your comments to videophonerep@hotmail.com

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SUMMARY

1. Exercise is essential for both weight loss and weight maintenance.

2. To burn the most fat, you should engage in interval training - that is, in short periods of intense exercise interspersed with rest periods.

3. In addition to causing greater fat loss than long-duration, moderate-intensity exercise, interval training is also better for cardiovascular conditioning.

4. Ten to fifteen minutes a day of interval training is enough to get both the fat-burning and cardiovascular benefits of this type of exercise.

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REFERENCES

1. Osterberg KL. Effect of Acute Resistance Exercise on Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption and Resting Metabolic Rate in Young Women. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism 200 Mar;10(1):71-81

2. Tremblay A. Impact of Exercise Intensity on Body Fitness and Skeletal Muscle Metabolisms. Metabolism 1994 July; 43 (7):814-818)

3. DeBusk RF. Training Effects of Long Versus Short Bouts of Exercise in Healthy Subjects. American Journal of Cardiology 1990 Apr 15;65(15):1010-1013)

4. Talanian JL. Two Weeks of High Intensity Aerobic Interval Training Increases the Capacity for Fat Oxidation During Exercise in Women. Journal of Applied Physiology Vol 102 No 4 April 2007 1439-1447.

5. Lee IM. Exercise Intensity and Longevity in Men. The Harvard Alumni Health Study. Journal of the American Medical Association 1998; 129:286-293

Comments

[Martha K. Martin]

Well I can see the articles I have read are written by a true professional and very helpful. Congraulations, keep it up..

[JIm S]

Wow - great stuff that I didn't realize. So, shorter with more intensity is better for fat burn. The one thing I'd like to know more about is the role of nutrition in the whole mix - I've seen a lot on the glycymic index food programs which really appear to me as nothing more than eating smaller amounts more often.

I also think that starting a routine and fat loss starts between the ears - by that I mean, with your attitude and determination to stick with a program. Along those lines, I believe it is imperative to have an accountability partner or support group to help you stick with the program you've started when those plateaus come along and those days where you just "dont feel like doing it".

I'd also like to hear more about the use and essence of body cleansing systems to help jump start a fat loss program and the important of nutritional supplementation in a fat loss program especially. Is there any info on the book that will cover HGH enhancers? I've used one such supplement and it really added my ability to do more during a strength training workout and drastically reduced my recovery time

[B. Schibly MD]

Stay tuned, Jim. The first part of the book is all about balancing your hormones and the second part is on nutrition.