Are you trying to loose weight or melt off some body fat you accumulated over the holidays (or in my case, over 9 months of pregnancy)? If so, this is going to involve a lot of cardiovascular exercise. But what is the best type of cardio for weight loss? Long, low intensity exercise? Shorter, high intensity exercise? Do you need 20 min? Or 60? It can be very confusing as experts are often changing their suggestions. And it’s really not as simple as just doing more cardio–diet affects weight loss, as does lifting weights (and yes, this does help you loose fat as building muscle means you increase your metabolism and burn more calories all day long, not just while you’re exercising).
I could go on and on with suggestions on how to loose weight, but here I’m going to include one of my favorites–interval training! In this type of cardiovascular exercise, you work out at a lower intensity for 1-2 min, then switch for a very high intensity for 1-2 min, then cycle back and forth between the two. The high intensity exercise should be challenging enough that you can’t maintain it for much longer than that couple minute interval. For example, walk for 2 min, run for 2 min, walk for 2 min, etc, etc. Keep this up for at least 20 min, preferably 30-40. While you might think that jogging for 40 min straight would burn more calories, it actually turns out that this interval training burns the most. It’s harder for your body to recover and repair from interval training, so overall you burn more calories. It also keeps your workout more interesting and challenging.
So next time you’re in the gym, don’t just glide through 30 min of steady state exercise on the elliptical trainer. Put down your magazine and really try to take it up a notch with interval training. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
