For Substantial Fat Loss, Efficiency is King

My latest Korea Herald article that went to press last week:

Conventional wisdom holds that slow and steady workouts are the best way to burn fat. This is why you sometimes see people on the treadmill when you first get to the gym, and they’re still there when you leave. These same people follow the old school maxim of ‘high reps, low resistance,’ when it comes to weight training. If this works for you and you enjoy it, wonderful! However, the rest of us can take solace in the fact that recent research suggests there is a more efficient strategy for overall fat loss.

The ‘slow-n-steady’ strategy towards cardio certainly burns calories, but the amount of calories you burn is entirely dependent on how long you’re active. In other words, you may burn 300 calories in an hour and a half, but that’s the limit for the calories you’re going to burn for the day.

By incorporating HIIT you’ll be able to burn more calories all day long. They do this by working out in intervals. At a very basic level, you can think of this as one minute of exercise nearly as hard as you can (80%-90% of your maximum effort) followed by one minute of ‘active rest’ (about 20%-30% effort). Active rest does not mean ‘rest.’ If you are running for your HIIT training, then you sprint during the hard interval, and take it down to a jog for the resting period. The good news is that you can get a full HIIT workout in less than twenty minutes. Don’t think for a minute, though, that it’s easy.

Similarly, you can look to efficiency to provide an answer for your weight lifting workout. By using exercises that incorporate multiple joint movements, you’ll use more of your body’s muscles. Also by structuring your exercises in circuits, rather than blocks of sets, you’ll start working on a different muscle group while the previous muscle group rests. In the mean time, you’re keeping your heart rate up. This makes a weightlifting workout as much about cardio as it is about lifting. Here’s an important tip: Don’t be afraid to go heavy! Building muscle means there’s more lean mass to burn more calories twenty-four hours a day. By building muscle, or at least maintaining what you have during fat loss, you are helping your body to help itself loose that gut.

In my case, my bare minimum is three lifting sessions per week, with about 48 hours between them to give the muscles time to recover (recovery time is where your muscles get bigger). I can do them over my lunch break and usually have enough time to enjoy the sauna or hot tub for a few minutes before showering and getting back to the office. Any of my extra workouts are HIIT workouts, which you could even do after your weightlifting if you really want to hit it hard. One of my all time favorite HIIT workouts is an old Men’s Health treadmill routine where I actually walk, but use various levels of incline as my intervals.

This is just an introduction to how you can put the latest research in fat loss to your benefit. Before embarking on a routine, you’d be well served to see a doctor, and then go online where you can find any number of workouts developed to maximize efficiency. A couple great places to start are the forums on MensHealth.com and Bodybuilding.com. Both places have loads of information on building a workout schedule that works for you.