Burn A Minimum of 200 Extra Calories A Day… But Potentially Upwards of 400… Maybe More
What if you could do one thing each morning and then throughout the day burn an extra 200 calories? That would be pretty sweet.
What if you could supercharge that and raise it to 400 or more calories a day? That would be completely life altering!
I found a study today that looked at doing sprint intervals on a stationary bike for only 3 minutes a day. Knowing that sprint intervals and interval training as a whole can do these types of things is not too new. I think this study just took a new look at intervals because it looked at calories burned after exercise during the day and not during the actual workout.
Plus they did such little exercise, it really makes your think what is possible with a better program.
Let me explain…
The Study Setup and Run Through:
Unfortunately this study was done with men and not women. But the results should be similar.
The University of Colorado Anschultz Medical Campus housed this experiment. Five men between 25 and 31 volunteered. Their diet was prescribed so they were eating to help with their energy balance. I don’t know exactly what that entails but I would imagine an even calorie load throughout the day… not one massive calorie load during a single meal like most people do. (This is a variable we have to consider.)
They spent two days locked in a room that had air control so the researchers could see how much of each element they were breathing from the air. On both days they living a very sedentary lifestyle. They watched movies… played video games… read books… etc…
However, on one of those days they did a small sprint interval on a stationary bike. They would peddle as fast as they could for 30 seconds and then slow down and peddle lighter for four minutes to recover. They did this interval five times. They were really encouraged to give 100% of their maximum effort for that 30 second burst.
On average they burned 200 calories on the day they did the interval… this was an extra 200 calories that day. Plus it resulted from just 2.5 minutes of intense work and 20 minutes of lighter work on a stationary bike none the less.
200 calories is nothing to shout home about. But if something so simple could be so effective…
Let’s Step This Up A Notch!
The workouts I prescribe my members in Fit Women’s Weekly are 30 to 40 minute circuit training bouts. Similar to interval training in that you have a longer bust of tough exercise and then rest periods to bring your heart rate down.
Besides the longer bout of vigorous exercise, the biggest difference is my circuits help you build strength and lean muscle mass. This alone burns a bunch of extra calories while you do nothing over the course of your week.
It’s completely on the conservative end to say you can burn an extra 400 calories a day using my circuit workouts.
Let’s Supercharge This Process!
Now add in some key nutritional changes and you will not just maintain weight loss, you’ll blast fat as really rapid and safe rates. More than that, it’s based on what a healthy lifestyle should look like so it will last for the rest of your life as well.
I suspect more studies will be done like this and they will really look at different types of exercise.
Let me know if you have any questions, but this is big because getting 1.5 hours of exercise in during the week is not hard to do at all. You can read all the nitty gritty details of this study here.