6 Super Effective Weight Loss Tips for Interval Training

Quite often the difference between incredible fat loss and no fat loss are the small things, small tweaks here and there make the biggest difference. Below are some small tips that when implemented make the biggest differences.

Use Your Biggest Muscles in Interval Training

The secret to Interval training being so effective is a little process call EPOC(Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption).  It's the process of your body replacing intramuscular energy that gets used up during intense exercise. Bigger muscles have bigger stores of energy that need to be replaced. The more energy needed to be replaced, the more fat will be required for energy. Just think about it this way, what would use more energy, intensely exercising your legs or going balls to the wall on your bicep. So weight loss tip one is use bigger muscles for bigger fat loss.

Include a Longer Interval in your Workout

Intense intervals of longer duration (60 seconds) use up a LOT of calories. Intense exercise triggers very efficient fat loss in your body, longer duration intense exercise triggers  a whole lot more.  Your body needs to work overtime to replace this lost energy. This is a direct form of weight loss. So weight loss tip two is that including one of these longer workouts in your workout will definitely improve your immediate fat loss.

Include a Shorter Interval in your Workout

Intense Intervals of short duration (20 seconds) have body changing affects.  And these effects are not only on the waist line. Your body undergoes a metamorphosis and adapts into a long term fat burning machine. Its start channelling energy to your muscles rather than fat stores, it increases its need for energy stores, it becomes super efficient at channelling energy into your muscles at a rate of knots and your muscles becomes very good at using up a lot more energy before failing. This adds up to a flood of energy being naturally diverted from your fat stores and your muscles becoming super efficient at using all this energy.  So weight loss tip three is include a shorter interval in your workout.

Eat before you Exercise

For a long time it was believed that doing interval training in a fasted state was the best for losing fat as you delayed the insulin surge that occurs when eating (insulin prevents your body from losing fat). Subsequently it has been found that this is not the case, in fact it's seems to be the opposite.  It appears that eating before training gives your body the ability to exercise harder, and as you will see below, the extent and duration of your fat burning is directly related to the intensity of your exercise.  It's also been found that any suppressing of fat loss that may occur directly after training is made up for in the entire fat burning process. And lastly but not least, it seems that when you eat before you train you tend to consume less calories during the day. Weight loss tip four is eat an easily digestable, highly nutritious meal about half an hour before you exercise.

Interval Training without Good Nutrition is Nothing

You can do Interval Training till the cows come home, but if your nutrition is not supporting weight loss, you won't get any fat loss. Interval training works in tandem with good nutrition to lose weight.  Good nutrition involves a low carbohydrate diet and meals times split into six times a day to increase your metabolism. It also involves providing the minerals, vitamins, energy and liquids required to power your body for maximum performance during your exercise. Nutrition shouldn't be a weight loss tip, it's one of the baseline principles, without it no fat loss happens.

Go as Hard as you Can

The secret to EPOC is intensity, Studies have shown that the more intense the exercise, the longer will be in a fat burning stage. They have also shown that the more intense the exercise, the greater the volume of fat burning will be. The body also adapts under intensity, the harder you can push yourself, the more your body adapts at becoming able to function at higher intensities (the one proviso for this is when you are starting out, ease into interval training, don't go full out from the beginning). Weight loss tip six is give it everything you have got.