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01/09/2022 8:47 am
Richard Winett www.ageless-athletes.com How Much and What Kind of Exercise Boosts Metabolism? Nieman DC. Does exercise ‘rev’ up your metabolism? Health & Fitness Journal. 2003; 7, 5-6. Recently, mass market magazines, Body for Life and its derivatives, and a number of websites have promoted specific cardiovascular training routines for remarkably increasing metabolism and, hence, also remarkably reducing body fat. In this brief, article, Nieman, a well-known exercise physiologist, reviews what is known about the effects of training protocols on resting metabolic rate (RMR) and post-workout excess energy expenditure. Succinctly, here are the facts: Moderate intensity endurance training for about 30 minutes only leads to an elevation in RMR for about 20-30 minutes resulting in an excess caloric expenditure of only 10-12 kcal. Vigorous exercise for 30 minutes increases RMR for 35 to 45 minutes resulting in an excess caloric expenditure of about 15-30 kcal. Increasing the duration of exercise to 90 minutes still results in a low amount of excess caloric expenditure unless high intensity was used for the entire 90 minutes. (Note: Does anyone want to do this day after day?) Highly trained endurance athletes who stop training for as little as two days have the same RMR as sedentary people with the same weight and body composition. It is only when endurance athletes train very hard and eat more that their RMR increases. Resistance training increasing fat-free mass and each pound of muscle that is added increases RMR by 7-10 kcal/day. However, on average people engaging in resistance training only add 4 to 5 pounds so that RMR is only increased 28-50 kcal/day. It is only the exceptional strength athlete and bodybuilder who can add a great deal of fat-free mass and therefore greatly increase RMR. Bottom-line: It does not appear, contrary to claims, that specific training protocols – outside of high intensity endurance training for up to 90 minutes – will dramatically increase RMR. This means there’s not any data to support the claims made about the Body for Life’s ‘20 minute solution’ or other very brief interval training programs. A few people can gain quite a bit of muscle mass and that increases RMR as long as the muscle mass is retained. Interestingly, even if you can gain 25 pounds of muscle that only equates to an RMR increase of 175-250 kcal/day. You can see why all the reviews in this issue suggest that to control body weight and body fat it’s simpler, less time-consuming, and seemingly far less aversive to just very modestly constrain eating, be somewhat more physically active, and do reasonable resistance training and aerobic training protocols. © 2003, Ageless Athletes Enterprises.
01/09/2022 9:03 am
how bout that.... thanks data, I now know thats theres no real reason to do intense cardio vs. low intensity as long as calories burned are the same. (hearth health aside that is)
Topic starter
01/09/2022 9:32 am
Comments: This article above coincides with another article that I posted a while ago called “Hard facts about soft tissue”. The authors of both articles suggest that nutrition plays a bigger role in controlling body composition than activity. However it’s been my experience that activity plays a larger role than the above authors suggest. Perhaps the sum of all the physiological adaptations (SAID principle) caused by exercise has a synergistic effect that hasn’t been accounted for. All I know is that diet alone won’t put me below 6%. The article also points out that the average resistance trainer can expect a 4-5 lbs gain over the course of a lifetime. Hopefully this sets up a more realistic expectation for young bodybuilders who condition themselves to set higher standards by constantly flipping through magazines that only show juiced up heavyweight genetic freaks. Consider the recent thread about ‘what’s a big guy to you” … Arnold was what 235lbs … Mike Mentzer was 215lbs … Zane was 195lbs. Sometimes people have unrealistic expectations or do not understand genetics. In addition, if each pound of muscle increases resting metabolic rate by 7-10 calories per day, a 15 lbs increase in lean muscle tissue over the course of a year would equal 38 000 to 55 000 calories per year. If a pound of fat contains 3 500 calories that’s 11-16 lbs of fat which is quite a lot of volume (5lbs of fat is slightly larger than a loaf of bread I do believe). One last thing I wanted to comment on was the difference between high intensity interval training and steady state aerobic exercise. Bodybuilders are already performing high intensity interval training but with a barbell instead of a stationary bike. If you think about it, we lift weights at a high intensity of effort for short intervals. You can’t tell me that a hard set of squats isn’t causing demands on my cardiorespiratory system. Sometimes people elevate HIIT to some sort of mystical status, when it’s all classified as exercise. If you exercise frequently, eat well, and burn more calories in a day than you consume in a day, you’ll lose weight. That which is ‘optimal’ is blurry and not defined.