Lose way more fat in half the time....

Today's post: Tuesday, 5-20-2008

Exercise DOES help people lose excess fat. But some people do a good bit without seeing as much progress as they’d like.

There are many reasons for this. One is that you can gain about the same amount of muscle as you lose in fat. So you look trimmer & may lose inches but the amount of weight is less than you might have expected. Another is that if you still eat too many fattening foods you can add the muscle but prevent the fat loss.

But clearly if you can be more effective at losing fat that helps. And, since people have limited time to exercise, if you can be more effective at losing fat AND cut the time it takes in half, that would be ideal.

One way that I’ve done posts on is to do progressive strength training at least two nonconsecutive days each week. THAT does work to trim fat.

But many people also do a lot of cardio or aerobic exercise & don’t see much extra fat loss from their cardio.

So, when I read the article I’m posting here in Early to Rise, I immediately decided to post it. It literally describes losing a LOT more fat in half the time.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

“How to Lose Your Belly and Thighs

By Craig Ballantyne

If you want to lose belly fat, you should do lots of crunches. And if you want to tone your thighs, you should reach for your ThighMaster. Right?
Wrong on both counts.

Instead, you should do a form of short-burst exercise that I've been using with clients since 1998 - long before the average trainer jumped on the bandwagon.
In one study, Australian researchers from the University of New South Wales put three groups of women through a 15-week fat-loss exercise program. One group was a control group. Another group did three sessions of intervals per week (20 minutes per workout). And the third group did three sessions of long, slow, boring cardio (40 minutes per workout).

Forty-five women were in the study - and it is important to note that they were not all overweight. On average, they had a healthy body mass index of only 23.22 (well below the cut-off of 25 that signals overweight).

At the end of the 15 weeks, only the interval-training group showed significant weight loss and a decrease in body fat and trunk fat. The interval-training group also had a significant loss of fat from their legs. And the more overweight a subject was, the better the interval-training program worked for her.

Oh, and did I mention that the slow, boring cardio workouts did NOT result in a significant loss of body fat? Something we've been saying here at ETR for a long time now...

So if you want to burn your belly fat and lose a few inches from your thighs, get started on a short, 20-minute interval-training program done three times per week. That's all you need.

[Ed. Note: If you are new to exercise but want to lose weight, start with a beginner bodyweight-training program for 2-6 weeks, such as the one in Craig's Turbulence Training manual. You will also get specific step-by-step instructions on how to do intervals at any fitness level…..] “

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There are a lot of ways to do interval training. The key is that you go at a medium pace and then go really fast for a short time and then either go back to a medium pace or rest and then repeat the process several times.

You do need to build up slowly as you become more fit. So if you go faster & run out of breath, stop until you are almost recovered before resuming or slow down to slow medium until you are almost recovered before you go faster again.

You can do this with walking, swimming, running, walking on a treadmill with an incline. You can do it on a trampoline if you are careful or a mini one like the UrbanRebounder.

I do mine on a Nordic Track.

Or, if you are already in good health & fit, you can do running fast uphill, or hill sprints, where you run up until you run up fast until you run out of breath, then walk down to where you started and repeat.

You also get in shape much faster this way than going at a steady pace, other studies have found.

And, for best results, gradually improve by going faster on the slow part, going faster on the fast part, or resting less between the fast parts. Note that this is progressive, just like progressive strength training. You gradually improve on purpose over time.

But interval training can also be done in a more playful & spontaneous way which does NOT work with strength training. You can go at a medium pace until you feel like going fast and then go really fast until you feel like slowing down. This works well for walking, running, & swimming. In running, they even have a name for it.

But as you can see, just 20 minutes three times a week of interval training got results.