Hey Joel
Great post..
I use High Intensity Thai / Kick boxing pad work to burn kcals.. Great fun and very effective!
I then combine this with supersets of body weight exercises..
Great for fitness too!
If you’re looking to shed body fat, there’s simply no getting around the fact that you absolutely must create some sort of caloric deficit.
Any way you look at it, you MUST burn more calories than you consume.
Now, it can get quite a bit more complicated than simple math would have us believe, but the fact remains–a deficit must be in place for fat loss to occur.
But, there are many different ways to create a deficit, some more effective than others.
For example, if you’d like to create an additional 300 calorie deficit per day, you could simply skip your morning bagel (approx 300 calories). Fairly simple to do, unless you have some weird affinity toward bagels like I do.
OR, you could walk for an HOUR on the treadmill and create the same 300 calorie deficit.
OR, you could do a 10 minute high intensity interval training workout and create the same 300 calorie deficit.
And here’s where things get a little more complicated than the numbers suggest.
In all three instances, you are essentially creating an additional 300 calorie deficit each day. BUT, scenario 1 sucks, scenario 2 really sucks, and scenario 3 trumps them all–bigtime.
Why?
Well, first, let’s say that you decide to create your caloric deficit soley by eliminating calories in your diet. By now, if you’ve been a follower of anything I’ve taught, you know that this will only result in some nasty hormonal consequences, leading to slowed metabolism and your body more or less canceling out the very deficit you are trying to create.
As far as scenario #2 goes, there are several issues. First, 60 friggin’ minutes to burn 300 calories??? That’s a LONG time to invest to burn less than a tenth of a single pound of fat (assuming that all calories burned are from fat, which they won’t be). At that rate, if you wanted to burn a pound of fat, you’d have to walk for close to 15 hours.
Wow.
Count. Me. Out.
The second problem with scenario #2 is that there is virtually no “afterburn” effect, so once the session is over, so is your calorie burn–metabolism goes right on back to it’s slow ways.
Now, with the third scenario, you’re investing much, much less time, but have the added benefit of the “afterburn” or elevated metabolism for the entire day (and sometimes even into the next day).
Which brings me to the question — how are you burning your calories?
Are you trying to “diet” the pounds away? Are you hoping to walk away 5, 10, or even 20 lbs — that will probably take you a few years (of walking). Or have you embraced the power of intense exercise?
In tomorrow’s post, I’m going to share with you 3 different scenarios (different from those I shared today), and in that post we’ll dig a little deeper into diet vs. exercise for fat loss and the REAL factor in determining fat loss (hint: it’s not calories in, calories out).
Comments welcome…
Talk to you below!
Joel
P.S. In the meantime, want another EASY way to burn 8 lbs of fat without doing ANYTHING? My buddy Jon Benson just posted a really cool tip here:
==> How to burn 8 lbs of fat without doing ANYTHING (30 second tip)
Keep rockin!
Joel
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Hi Joel
2 months ago I started training for a half marathon, and reading your blogs regularly, and so began incorporating interval training into my program- and I can really say its made a difference! Not so much in the weight loss, but in firming and I feel slimmer and more toned. AND I love the fact that on the days I cannot fit in a good run, I can achieve so much with a 20 min workout.
Thanks for great info!
Lois.
Basically I agree with you, but 90 min of walking at 3.5-4 mph should burn off around 600kcal (400kcal per hour).
Therefore 300kcal should take you around 45min, not 90min.
I coach a lot of obese individuals myself, and most of these people are not physically fit enough to perform HIIT, at least not in the first few month of their exercise program. As effective as HIIT may be, I don’t recommend it for everyone.
Very true though *2 doesn’t always suck. I spend that time each day walking my dog. It is great for your general health but no use at all for losing weight. The other problem with that amount of walking is everyone says “Doing that amount of walking you shouldn’t be overweight”. Now that really sucks when you have heard it for the hundredth time!
I’ve been doing intervals the past three months, it feels good.
I’m 5’8″, 161 lbs and my target is to lose 18 pounds. So far I’ve been doing intervals and have been mixing it up with TT and other forms of training.
I’ve only managed to lose 2-4 pounds so far. Not much, I know but I can put the cause down to my own indiscipline when it comes to food…
Yep, I try to eat every two hours of good organic food choices and do interval training and slow cardio walking my dogs. My main “burn” is intense weight training. I am also trying to incorperate a cheat day using your CYWT method.
Got my results back from some blood work and received the best numbers yet, so I must be doing something right! ;-)
Hey Joel, great post. I was having some problems structuring my nutrition for performance and muscle definition without getting really big. Do you mind if I pick your brains for a bit?
I’m currently working out 6 days per week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday consist of gaining strength through bodyweight calisthenics (progressing to one-armed pullups and pushups, one legged squats, etc) while I usually do intervals on Tuesday and Thursday, with 10×100m sprints or shuttle runs and aerobic intervals of something like 4×5min hard, 2min rest. I have a soccer game every Saturday.
I have a predominantly high carb diet, with 1 cup of brown rice, a serving of oats, a sweet potato and 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I add a serving of salmon to my lunch and some chicken and pork to my dinner, maybe a serving each. I have a cashew butter sandwich as a post-workout treat. My BMR is about 1500kcal.
To get ripped and also increase my performance, do you think I should make any tweaks to my diet? Thank you very much!
High intensity cardio can be substituted with full body weight training workouts with short rest periods that will produce lactic acid, wich in turn will produce Growth Hormone to build muscle and burn fat! The afterburn from these workouts are very effective!
Hi Joel
my name Abdul
and I do cardio for 6 days of the week
I know I’m crazy but I’ve been trying to lose weight for nearly a year and ever since I started the 6 days a week I have been losing around 4kg a month
did this for 2 months so far
3 days I do aerobic exercise like jogging for 30 mins and uphill walking for 15 minutes
and the other 3 days I do anaerobic exercise which is a short routine of walk jog walk sprint and repeat for 20 mins
do u think this is a good workout for cardio not enough or jus crazy
please let me know
thanx
thanx for the updates u keep emailing, they are of help and encouraging. however, are u trying to suggest that we should forget walking as a way of burning calories (with or without a treadmill)? pse do reply bse am one person who loves to walk back home from work as a way of burning calories. tell me if am wasting ma tym. thank u
Joel,
Does the 18 minutes “MIT” (mixed interval training) routin of alternating 2 minute fat, 2 minute slow) workout outlined in CYWT qualify as HIIT? Or is it more of a stepping stone to HIIT?
I’ve read other places that “true” HIIT requires all out/maximum effort/about-to-fall-off-the-treadmill type of spring effort for 30 seconds or so, followed by recovery rate efforts and then several more intervals of the same again. The MIT – using alternating 2 minute periods of pretty hard effort followed by 2 minutes periods of recovery activity is a more doable and manageable approach for many people – including beginngers, older folks, etc. But does it provide the same “afterburn” as classic HIIT? As we master a level of MIT should we simply ramp up the speed or effort level and stay with 2 minute periods or should we be striving toward maximum intensity and shorter duration HIIT?
Thanks.
Sorry – the should be “sprint” not “spring.” And I do know how to spell “routine.”
Fat fingers. (But less fat elsewhere – down 46 pounds!)
It sounds simple. Do you recommend interval training to beginners?
I try to cut my fat down with my diet and workout.
But i think my own “calorie-killer” is a hard 1.5h fight-training each day.
Dont wonder thats my job so :D
swimming also really good.
from germany björn
Hey, I would love to find a decent Bagel around here. Yep I do the third option. How’s the one meal a day going Joel ? You are a crazy Dude!
I’ve been doing a high intensity routine for a couple of months: 4 minutes TABATA-style rowing machine work out followed by approx. 10-15 minutes of free weight routines from Joel’s guide. While the weight isn’t falling off me, I do indeed notice a difference in feeling better, in clothes fitting better etc etc. Mostly, I think I’m slowly retraining my metabolism to stop behaving like my ancestors’ from Scotland did! i don’t need that extra fat to keep safe and warm!
Sticking to my routine in Toronto…
Trish
As a smaller female, 10 minutes of HIIT would certainly not burn 300 calories for me. Not even in 20 minutes.
Joel, many of your buddies in the fitness industry have actually embraced fasting for fat loss, including Brad Pilon, Vince Delmonte, and Craig Ballantyne. Pilon goes so far as to debunk the theory of “starvation mode” and reduced metabolism in his book “Eatstopeat.” How would you respond to them?
Joel,
Definitely agree with you that doing things at a higher intensity is going to bring better and faster results. During the summer i’d go running for an hour sunday mornings after my cheat day just to burn off the sugar i’d stored from the day before. I enjoy being outside when its warm and listening to music while running i find as a huge stress reliever.
Since the cold weather has come, i’ve turned my basement in to a tiny “cardio” gym where i’ve got the sandbags i usually put in the back of my car for snowy days. With the bags on my shoulders, I’ve been doing 3 sets of lunges followed by stair climbing then a set of max push ups and max pull ups, high enough reps that its more of a cardio workout. I’ve been able to get my body fat even lower than i had it during the summer when i was running after my cheat day. I’ve heard you say before that personal success is the only way to measure what works for you, and this is definitely working better and only takes about 15-20 minutes to do.
Thanks for the good articles.
90 minutes to burn 300 calories!?!?! Are you CRAWLING on that treadmill? I burn 600+ in 40 minutes on a treadmill, cranking fast walk with very steep incline.
Now IMHO, HIiT Cardio is not the greatest for fat loss as it eats muscle. How do I know? I experimented with it. When I was cutting up for a Natural BB Contest, it chewed through muscle. Less muscle = slower metabolism. How do Bodybuilders get cut? Steady State cardio. Yeah, it sucks, but it works! How do I know? I did it! It did NOT eat my muscle tissue either. We know bodybuilders get the leanest of any dieters. If bodybuilders do steady state cardio, don’t lose muscle, but burn fat – then it must work. It did for me and all I ever did was 40 minute sessions about 5-7 times per week. I trained with weights 4 days per week. The BEST way to lose fat is to build muscle!
I totally agree with you! I did cut out bagels but once in a while I will still have one, I hate slow go cardio so the high intensity interval traning is what I do every second day… I switch between the elpitical and the high intensity traning I have lost 15 lbs in a short period of time and feel great!! I do watch what I eat but dont get me wrong I still like my chocolate here and there… and maybe a tastey starbucks green tea latee :-) Its amazing how great this high intensity traning works… I can see myself gettin leaner and thinner and have much more energy then before… I used to go to the gym 5 days a week for a hour and a half… running for a hour and seen not much of a difference… so I am a TOTAL believer! Thank you Joel!!
What a great weekend at Transformation Domination LIVE! You put on a first class event, Joel, and it was awesome to meet all the “rock stars” of the fitness world, spend time with them up close and personal, learned something from everyone. Hope you do it again next year!
So, since I’m training with you, I’m burning my 300 calories with Metabolic Resistance Training and weights (and cheating :))…it’s working! Great program, little time, lots of intensity and more time to spend on life. Thanks.
I’ve been doing some Cross-fit workouts with some people at my school and they are really intense. We will also be doing this thing called navy seal immersion which is a 24 hours of workouts with food breaks. Today I am doing 5 rounds for time of
-500m row
-95 pound thrusters x 7
good stuff.
crossfit.com has some good workouts
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Hey, it’s Joel! So you want to know a little more about me, huh? Well, I’d be happy to oblige :-)
I guess it all started back in 2001 (my freshman year of college) when I was just a “skinny fat” 19-year old kid. At the time, I was spending close to 2 hours a day in the gym (now my workouts last about 30 minutes), and despite my efforts, you’d probably never guess I worked out a day in my life by looking at me...