During a breakfast meeting recently, I ordered an English muffin and some fruit. As I was enjoying this, one of the other people at the meeting said, "I just can't eat things like that without doing a bunch of cardio. Is that what you do?"
I said, "So, you mean you feel like you gain weight from eating carbohydrates?"
"Yes, that's right, I do, unless I stick with my cardio."
"Hmmm. So, what do you do?" I asked.
"Oh, about thirty minutes on an elliptical machine a few days a week."
"Does it work for you?" I asked?
"Well, I guess so. I know I can't eat many carbs otherwise," she replied.
The holidays are carbohydrate dense days. Lots of food and lots of calories and many people use "cardio" to keep from gaining weight.
"Cardio" isn't bad for you or a waste of your time. In fact it's a key component of a joint conditioning program, but in terms of burning calories, you have to do a lot of it. Things like cycling, jogging, or elliptical for thirty minutes might burn 200 calories depending on how much you weigh and how hard you're exercising. But, the bigger issue is that you burn very few calories after you stop exercising.
Usually when I suggest that "cardio" is not the best fat burning method, someone will bring up Lance Armstrong or Michael Phelps and wonder why, if "cardio" doesn't burn many calories, these guys are so trim and apparently fit. The answer is that they train for hours per day; not 30 or 45 minutes. They have what is called a high "energy flux".
Most of us don't have four or five hours per day to train.
But, we can train intensely in the time we do have.
To lose fat, you have to create a calorie deficit: burn more calories than you consume. The most efficient way to do that with exercise is to increase not only the number of calories you burn during the activity but also the "after-burn": excess post-exercise oxygen consumption’ or EPOC.
Scientific studies have consistently shown that the highest levels of EPOC occur with higher intensities of training over longer periods of time. So, for example, if you hop on an elliptical machine for thirty minutes and exercise at 50% of your maximum, your EPOC will last about three hours. But, if you increase your intensity to 75%, the EPOC will last a little over 10 hours and you'll burn twice the number of calories during that time.
To boost the EPOC even more, you could use High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT): a short period of high speed movement followed by a longer period, usually 2 to 3 times the duration of the shorter period, of slower movement. Thirty minutes of running at 70% of your maximum has half the EPOC compared to twenty minutes of one minute, high speed intervals.
So, how do you know how hard you're exercising?
The simplest way is to use the BORG Rating of Perceived Exertion. After a few minutes, your rating should be 12 to 13 to match up with about 70% of your maximum and you want to keep it in this range for the entire session. If you're using the HIIT, your BORG rating will be very high during the burst of activity. So, the BORG is best used for the sustained type of exercise. (Keep in mind that intensity is a relative term. What's intense for one person may be moderate or mild for another. If you've not been exercising regularly, you'll probably want to start with long, slow distance type training first and gradually build up the intensity.)
Intensity is the king of fat burning. If you're going to use "cardio", ramp up your intensity to get the most out of the time and your holidays.
Other articles you might also like:
LSD (Long Slow Distance)
Burn, Baby, Burn
What is Moderate Exercise?