There was a 5km fun run in town that I figured I'd use as motivation. I did a slightly modified HIIT routine: walking warm up to the football field a few blocks away from my house, 8x flat out sprints from end to end with 15-30s recovery, and then cool down by walking back home.
I went from probably 15 months of completely sedentary life to running a 23min 5km race in about 6 weeks. I ended up finishing somewhere around 15th in the race, and every person who did better than me was listed as "M (18-23)"... and I don't even pretend that I can compete with testosterone-soaked young men :D
Absolutely correct. After HIIT, brisk walking blocks of Manhattan wouldn't make me sweat even if it had before.
Athletes who train for the mile have to have intervals as the majority of their regiment. This is by far more effective then running long distances for increasing vo2 max.
Is there actual evidence that this is generally effective?
That said, I do hit for the cardio benefits of improving myself instead of thinking it's a weight loss miracle.
Almost always I've found the key to weight loss is eat less, nothing to do with working out (so long as you do actually work out a bit).
https://www.elevaterope.com/tabata-intervals/
When I originally came across Tabata in mid 2000s, nobody said it worked for BMI adjustment. The research was around whether you had to exercise for hours to build endurance. It was reasonably conclusive you could build endurance using this mechanism. The contemporary research suggested the endurance came from different metabolic processes becoming accessible, and that Tabata style HIIT kicked that in.
That extra donut or candy bar you had? That's an hour or so on a treadmill.
The good news is that almost all diets work, find one you can stick to and stick to it. You should see results. It's not a fast process though. It didn't take a week or a month to put on that weight, it's not going to take a week or a month to get rid of it.
Me personally, the weight watchers tier with the weekly call with a coach was immensely helpful for me, but there's all kinds of other diets you can try.
Cutting out something specific without replacing it can work wonders. For instance, cut out sugar water (soda) and do not replace it with anything. You don't need to count calories, you will take in fewer of them, and you will lose weight.
> "it's really hard to burn more than you eat"
Yes, flip side is "or burn more" which, 100% agree, is incredibly difficult. As I noted, most people don't have the will to make themselves feel sick from anaerobic effort.
* +40% - weight loss from burning more calories
* -20% - weight gain from eating more due to doing more sport
* +40% - less snacking from being away from food sources for more hours
* +20% - being more conscious of fitness and weight and being more disciplined about food
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-013-0039-8
High levels of serotonin will make most people nauseous.
Graph your weight. After 6 weeks of HIIT, you'll see weight really shed because you're not burning calories during exercise but 24/7, and because of that metabolic shift, the weight will continue to shed for months even if you stop HIIT.
* HIIT is High Intensity Interval Training. It's a technical term, doesn't mean "oooh, that was intense". It means exercise at level that forces your body into using different metabolic mechanisms to fuel your effort. Initially it will probably make you feel ill. If you aren't used to it, and are doing it right, you will probably feel nauseous after the effort.
Your aim is expending energy about 4 minutes above your VO2Max, doing anaerobic exercise.
In a 4 - 8 minute routine called Tabata intervals** you can do:
- 2 minute warmup to hit your second highest heart rate band (probably 125 - 135), then
- 4 one minute intervals at max heart rate, generally 30 - 45 seconds "on" and 15 - 30 seconds recovery, four times in a row, followed by
- 2 minutes cooldown.
You can probably not hit these heart rates on foot or on normal exercise machines, you probably need a climber, rower, or elliptical (in that order of 'kicks your ass').
** For iOS, try the app "Seconds Pro" which offers brilliant timer routines for loops within loops.
EDIT TO ADD ANECDATA GRAPH:
Here is my personal graph in 2015 and 2016 when I tried this in my mid-40s to get rid of the 30 lbs gain that happened after I hit 40 with a corresponding metabolic slowdown:
https://i.imgur.com/pvbvoMy.jpg
I bought a Nokia scale about a month into HIIT in late spring, and stopped HIIT a couple weeks later.
After stopping, dropped 10 lbs from early summer through the fall. Over winter, began to gain.
Did HIIT again in spring of 2016 for six more weeks.
Stopped when weight started shedding, dropped another 10 lbs.
Finally, did one last cycle in 2017, dropped another 10 lbs.
Overall graph from 2015 to 2021 (stopped bothering with the scale because was steady state):
https://i.imgur.com/U6U7HrH.jpg
Haven't done HIIT since 2017, no purposeful exercise except for a few weeks of swimming in 2018. The three rounds of HIIT seem to have adjusted me back to my high school weight/metabolism balance.
WARNING: These heart rate numbers are examples, see your doctor. Anerobic exercise and heart rate in your max heart rate band are potentially dangerous.