Sure, you know that regular exercise can help you lose weight. But you can get more calorie burn for your exercise buck without exercising more!
How it works may surprise you
The key to burning more calories after you stop exercising is called “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption,” or EPOC. (Some coaches call it “exercise after-burn.”)
EPOC always happens after you stop exercising, because your body needs to burn more oxygen, and therefore calories, to “recover” to a normal state. It’s how long it lasts, from minutes to hours, that can make a difference in your weight loss.
How does oxygen come into it? Here’s the surprise: You breathe out almost all your weight loss!
Huh?
When you burn fat, you may think it somehow changes into heat or energy, or breaks up into little bits that you excrete one way or another.
Uh-uh. Your body stores your excess protein and carbs as fatty molecules called triglycerides, which are made up of carbon, hydrogen, and, wait for it … oxygen. When you’re losing weight, these triglycerides break up into their 3 building blocks in a process called … oxidation. The oxygen fuels the fat-burning process and produces carbon dioxide and water as waste products.
What happens next? Studies show that you exhale more than 80% of your “lost” body fat as carbon dioxide and eliminate the rest as water. Amazing, isn’t it?
You can make your EPOC last longer
Here’s how to fire up the burn:
- Exercise at a moderate pace longer and harder. The longer you exercise and the higher your intensity, the greater your EPOC—and your after-exercise calorie burn.
- Exercise in intervals. Your calorie and fat burn are optimized when you do HIIT (high-intensity interval training), which producers a greater EPOC response.
- Include resistance training in your workouts. Resistance training, at least 2 times a week and especially at higher intensity levels, also increases your EPOC output.
Should you change how you exercise to boost your EPOC response?
Absolutely! To maximize your oxygen churn focus your cardio on HIIT and include more weight resistance training. That’s a better approach than steady state cardio that most of us are used to.
Check with your health coach to make sure you include the right type of exercise at the right time. It’s a fine balance between your healthy nutrition and healthy activity.
If you have a medical condition, check with your doctor before increasing your exercise level.
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