HIIT: The Most Powerful Fat Burning Protocol

HIIT stands for high intensity interval training and it is without a doubt the best way to get your body to burn as much fat as possible in a given period. The hard truth is that weight loss is a slow process.

At times you may even feel like your weight loss progress is as slow as one snail attending another snail’s funeral. All your efforts may seem to yield miniscule results. HIIT will take your results to the next level and accelerate your fat loss.

While you’ll not lose 10 pounds overnight, you’ll definitely lose more weight in a shorter time.

• What makes HIIT so effective?

When you engage in a HIIT session, you’ll be exerting maximum effort and going as fast as you can. For example, a 30-second sprint followed by 45 seconds of rest (repeated 6 to 10 times) is considered a HIIT workout.

During the sprints, you’ll be running as fast as you can, as if your life depended upon it. Your heart will be pumping, and you’ll be gasping for air. This creates an ‘oxygen deficit’ in your body.

What happens now is that your body will be in fat burning mode for hours after your workout is over, trying to make up for this oxygen deficit. In the fitness industry, it’s called EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.

It’s akin to making a large withdrawal from the bank… and it takes you ages to slowly pay back the loan. Just like that, the body will take up to 8 or 12 hours to return the ‘loan’.

During this time, you’ll constantly be burning calories… long after the workout is over. This is very different from conventional cardio where you walk/run on the treadmill for an hour.

Generally, most people can’t exert maximum effort for such a long duration. So, their pace will be much slower. The end result is that they will burn calories, BUT they’ll only do so during the workout.

Once the workout session is over, the fat burning benefits will taper off and the body will return to its normal state. No oxygen deficit and no accelerated rate of calorie burning.

So, using HIIT will make you a fat melting machine that is always primed towards calorie burning,

• How many HIIT sessions a week should you do?

Generally, 3 sessions a week should suffice. Most people are not professional athletes. Taking a one-day break after each HIIT session will give your body and central nervous system time to recover.

You can engage in resistance/weight training on the days when you’re not doing HIIT. An ideal workout regimen may look like this:

• Monday – HIIT
• Tuesday – Weight training
• Wednesday – HIIT
• Thursday – Rest
• Friday – HIIT
• Saturday – Weight training
• Sunday – Rest

If you follow this schedule, you’ll constantly be in fat burning mode and getting toned from the resistance training. There’ll also be adequate rest for your body to recover. If you feel like you’re getting burned out, you can take an extra day to rest.

HIIT is so powerful that even with fewer workouts and shorter durations, it will still leave you ripped and fit. You’ll lose much more weight with HIIT than conventional mind-numbing cardio. Go out hard and finish harder.