We often hear folks recommend that people perform things like interval training and resistance training during a diet. This is likely due to each activity being more effective for maintaining lean mass than steady state cardio, but the EPOC effect could also play a role.
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💥 EPOC essentially refers to how many additional calories you burn per unit time after exercise. In this study, it was found that both strength training and interval training caused subjects to burn about 15-25% more calories per hour following their workout than subjects that only performed steady state cardio. Why is this the case?
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💥 To keep it simply, both interval training and strength training will stress the body and muscles to a greater degree than steady state cardio. This stress carries a debt with it – the body will have to repair damaged muscles and refill spent fuel tanks to ensure we’re ready for the next workout. This process requires calories to run correctly. Therefore, if you need a quick trick for burning a few extra hundred calories a day, try interval training instead of traditional cardio. If you’re new to lifting, keep it up as it will definitely help you burn fat!
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