Quote:
Originally Posted by fengshway
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I think he's got more or less the right idea there.
Any way you cut it, you need a low volume of heavy work in there to keep muscle mass and strength levels, then follow that up with whatever you need to waste calories.
No matter how you shake it, it's going to come back to calories in vs. calories out. You have to burn up more energy than you take in by diet. So at first glance, it can seem like eating more and doing more activity will be magical. And high-intensity cardio does have all those studies to back it up.
Problems:
1) It's easier to not eat calories in the first place than it is to burn them off w/ activity. Unless you're just doing a crazy amount of work, you can do the same thing by just dropping the equivalent of a meal or two out of your diet.
2) High intensity work requires fuel. I don't just mean to fuel the activity, I mean to recover from as well. The end result? If you're doing enough high-intensity work to have an effect on your energy balance, then you're doing enough to affect your recovery and nutritional needs. In other words, you either eat enough to recover, or you don't recover.
3) EPOC and thus
HIIT's main touted advantage may not add up to all that much to begin with.