Health Basics 101: Lesson 3 – High Intensity Interval Training
If you are really trying to burn FAT, one of the best ways to do that is to incorporate High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into your exercise routine. This is extreme exercise, at maximal effort, for short durations of time (because you just can’t go any longer). If you’ve ever tried Tabata, it is a version of a HIIT.
Wait!!! Yesterday, didn’t I say that the cardio you want to do if your goal is to lose weight is something at a low-moderate intensity for a longer period time? Yes, yes I did. And doesn’t this completely contradict what I just said? Yes, yes it does. Are you thoroughly confused now? I’ll try to explain…
In order to burn fat WHILE you are exercising, the best way is to do low-moderate intensity exercise for longer periods of time (60-90 mins). However, to burn more fat AFTER you are done exercising, the key is HIIT.
While doing a short HIIT session of exercise, you burn about the same amount of calories as if you were doing a longer, more moderate intensity exercise session. You also tend to use more sugar than fat, to create the energy you need for that HIIT exercise. This means you burn more sugar. The low-moderate intensity, longer exercise tends to use more fat for that energy. However, AFTER you finish exercising, your body goes into “debt” to try and heal everything you just did to break it down (yes, exercise breaks down your body, and it is the healing process that builds us up stronger). To pay off that “debt”, your body uses entirely FAT sources to create the energy to heal everything. Therefore, you continue to burn fat even when you are eating, sleeping, working, and doing everything else you normally do in life. The more intense the exercise it, the longer that process will take, the more fat that is being used to do all that work, and the more fat you will lose. This time period can last as little as 30 minutes (for really low-intensity exercise), up to 24 hours later (for really intense exercise).
There is a downside to all of this. Your body can’t really maintain multiple days in a row of *really* intense exercise. So, I would suggest only using this 1-3 days per week, and listen to your body to know when you are doing it too often. The injury you could gain is not worth the loss in fat.
If you are interested more in the science behind this, or more details on how this works in your body, check our this PodCast I did a while ago on HIIT. It is about 13 minutes, and contains some good information.
Other random facts about FAT:
– You actually never lose or gain fat cells. Instead you shrink and expand them.
– Muscle never turns into fat. If you get out of shape, you have just decreased your muscle mass and increased your fat mass (it didn’t convert)
– There are two types of fat in your body – Visceral fat (the kind around your organs, which you can’t see), and subcutaneous fat (the kind under skin, that you can see). A skinny person might not have a lot of subcutaneous fat, but could have a lot of visceral fat, and vice versa for an overweight person. However, VISCERAL fat is the kind that is the most unhealthy for us.
Have more questions about fat, feel free to ask me below!