The Best Fat Burning Workout ……Can Happen While You’re Sitting on the Sofa.
Ever hear of “EPOC?” You may have heard it called "Afterburn." It’s when your body keeps burning calories and fat after your workout is over. However, less commonly known is the fact that a small tweak to the intensity or structure of your workouts can elevate the phenomenon known as EPOC for hours after your workouts are over. This extra burn can translate into more total calories burned, additional weight loss benefits and an enhanced performance during each session!
What is EPOC? (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption or The Afterburn Effect)
EPOC refers to the elevation in metabolism (rate that calories are burned) after an exercise session ends. The increased metabolism is linked to increased consumption of oxygen, which is required to help the body restore and return to its pre-exercise state. Contributing factors to a higher EPOC include:
The re-synthesis of lactate to glycogen (stored carbohydrate in the muscles and liver)
Re-oxygenation of the myoglobin and haemoglobin
Elevated heart rate
Elevated neurotransmitters/hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline
Higher core temperature
If you can trigger EPOC, your body can actually continue to burn calories for up to 48 hours after you finish your workout.
How do you achieve EPOC?
The answer isn’t longer workouts. It’s not more cardio. It’s not taking supplements. It’s short, intense efforts, changing eating strategies and combining with the right amount of rest.
Research has shown that eating before early morning exercise sessions elevated both metabolism and fat utilisation for 24 hours afterwards. If you are not an early-morning eater or are short on time, consider eating just one food or a homemade smoothie before your early morning workouts. Eat a real breakfast afterwards, or soon afterwards, because the body is best at using the food consumed within 30–60 minutes to replenish depleted glycogen (the stored form of carbohydrate) and to stop the post workout breakdown of muscle.
Higher Intensity = Higher EPOC
The intensity of exercise appears to be the most significant factor in boosting post-exercise metabolism. For those that are currently doing mostly aerobic, steady-state workouts, or weight training, adding 1–2 strategically spaced high intensity training sessions per week (greater than 80–85% of the maximum heart rate) can be a catalyst for better results. Remember that going into high intensity sessions well-rested will lead to the highest quality workout.
Benefits of Intervals Versus Steady-State Exercise
Mixing bouts of intense work with bouts of recovery can also:
Add variety
Increase the power/watts generated during an interval in comparison to high-intensity steady-state work
Contribute to maintenance of better form
Maximally improve performance
Further elevate EPOC
As an added bonus, high intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions can produce the results listed above within a shorter training session in comparison to lower intensity, steady-state rides. In addition to putting the body in an anaerobic state, there are also coordination benefits and additional muscle fibre recruitment that is created from a rapid ramping up of the heart rate and power output.
Simply eating before early morning workouts and incorporating one to two structured HIIT sessions per week are two strategies that can be used to increase EPOC so that elevation in metabolism and fat burning continues long after a workout ends. As optimal results are best achieved when exercise and nutrition are addressed simultaneously; scaling the caloric intake up earlier in the day and reducing it later in the day, and every day, can produce additional changes in hormones, hunger and satiety levels and increase the rate calories are burned so that you can see your efforts to improve exercise and diet is showing results.
For further advice please do not hesitate to get in touch,
Be(come) Fit For Anything
Roel