It's Not Just About Calories Burned

I know I haven't been doing as much personal blogging lately. I've got so much on my mind with Body & Soul's upcoming move and I just don't have the time. Rather than temporarily abandoning the blog, I've been posting a lot of articles from other fitness pros. I hope you understand and find them helpful.

If you've been to No Pink Dumbbells before, you probably know that I'm a big proponent of cardio intervals over long, slow, steady state cardio sessions.

Below is an excellent article from Alwyn Cosgrove about the results of a study that compared low intensity cardio to high intensity cardio in regards to their effects on abdominal fat loss in obese women.

Here is a compelling excerpt:

The interesting thing was the researchers controlled the groups for total calories burned -- so they adjusted the duration of the high intensity group's workouts so that they didn't burn any more calories than the lower intensity group. So both groups burned the exact same number of calories (400 calories per session) - and obviously the higher intensity group exercised for a shorter period of time on those days.

This is where the results are interesting. Despite burning the exact same amount of calories over the sixteen weeks - the low intensity group did not see any changes in abdominal fat. The exercise program did not do anything. However the high intensity group saw a significant reduction in abdominal fat.

You can read the entire post here ==> Alwyn Cosgrove blog.