If you love spending an hour on a treadmill then I take my hat off to you. You have more time and patience than I do. When advising people on the fastest way to burn off kilojoules for weight loss, I always tell them to follow interval training methodologies. By altering your pace and intensity frequently throughout a workout, your can burn as many calories as you would by maintaining a steady pace for doubly as long. This is really great news considering how busy most of us are and if you're anything like me, the quicker you can get off the cardio machines, the better! Check out the below article for more on interval training and fat-burning supplements.
Printed in TheAge Thursday Dec 14, 2010
There are benefits to interval training.
Fat burning might be the holy grail of weight loss, but what does it really mean – that burning fat as fuel is the best way to shed kilos? There’s confusion about this and it stems from the idea that when you work out at an easier pace – known as the ‘fat burning zone’ - you burn more fat as fuel, says exercise physiologist Dr Jarrod Meerkin. But what really counts for weight loss isn’t the type of fuel you use – carbohydrates or fat – but the total number of kilojoules you burn, he says.
The secret to using up more kilojoules is increasing your heart rate –in other words if you sprint for a few minutes you’ll burn more kilojoules than if you walk for the same length of time. If this sounds too hard, Meerkin has good news. You can keep the sprints short – say 30 seconds – and alternate them with two minutes at a slower pace. Called interval training, this technique burns kilojoules more effectively than working at the same consistent speed.
Besides giving you time to recover, interval training can boost the rate at which you burn kilojoules for a period of 24 hours or more after your exercise session is over, says Meerkin, a spokesperson for Exercise and Sports Science Australia, the professional organisation of exercise physiologists. Working out at the same pace – say a steady 30 minute jog - will also raise this kilojoule burning rate after exercise, but for only for two or three hours, he says.
You can use interval training in different kinds of exercise, and it’s suitable for anyone who’s very overweight – providing their doctor has given the okay to vigorous interval training.
“All forms of cardio exercise are good for weight loss, depending on how you do it - 30 minutes alternating sprints with a slower pace is more effective for weight loss than an hour at a steady pace,” he says.
We often hear that swimming isn’t great for weight loss, but you can make it more effective by alternating five 50 metre laps swimming as fast as you can, with a few minutes walking around the pool for recovery, says Meerkin - this burns more kilojoules than just swimming laps.
“Try to work up to doing 10 fast laps, alternating with recovery walks. Like cycling or rowing, swimming is good exercise for anyone who’s very overweight because the load on their joints is reduced,” he says.
Having spent 30 minutes torching kilojoules with exercise, can sipping green tea or popping a fat burning supplement chew up some more? There are good reasons to drink green tea but fat burning isn’t one of them, says Associate Professor Tim Crowe of Deakin University’s School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences. Although there’s evidence that antioxidants in green tea can increase metabolism slightly when combined with caffeine, the marketing hype is ahead of the science, he says.
So when a sales assistant pointed to green tea extract listed on a weight loss supplement in my local pharmacy recently and told me there’s evidence it boosts metabolism, she wasn’t fibbing. She just didn’t mention that this increase doesn’t translate into significant weight loss. The same goes for capsaicin an ingredient in chili and capsicum says Crowe. It also increases metabolism – a bit.
“There’s a kernel of truth with most of these ingredients, but the effect is so miniscule they’re not a pathway to weight loss. Chitosan, marketed as a fat absorber, does absorb fat but you'd need to take it for 16 months to absorb one kilo of fat,” he says
Calcium appears in some supplements on the strength of studies showing some effect on weight loss – yet most research suggests this benefit is with dairy food rather than supplements, says Crowe. Another hyped ingredient, CLA or conjugated linoleic acid, a fatty acid found in beef and dairy products, is promising because it reduced body fat in some studies – but a review of weight loss supplements in the Journal of Obesity this year, said the research was still inconclusive.
Given that any effect of these supplements is small, there’s not much bang for your buck. With price tags like $25 or $50, for two weeks supply, losing a kilo over 16 months could be costly, says Crowe.
A pair of sports shoes sounds like a better investment.
