SS 160 – HIIT Vs Steady State Cardio For Fat Loss

Grant and Heavey celebrate the New Year as they talk about what the ideal way to lose fat is – HIIT or the traditional steady state cardio training? The number one resolution for each new year is to lose weight or fat. So Grant and Heavey have decided to take the whole month to do a series of episodes on different topics related to fat loss. Also, they kick off their first show of the year discussing some weird life choices people do everyday.

 

[02:38] How Do You Brush Your Teeth?

 

Heavey came across a list of things that people swear by as part of their experience of being human and can’t understand people who aren’t aligned with their way of doing this particular thing.

 

Grant, for instance, sits when he pees, which is quite odd for Heavey (and surely for most men). Anyway, they’re dishing out some odd things to check if they find any shared, odd quirks.

 

First, is the tooth-brush. Grant grabs a toothbrush, puts a little water, and then toothpaste. Heavey is toothbrush-toothpaste-little bit of water. And, there are people who swear by toothbrush, little bit of water, then squirt the tube in their mouth to apply the toothpaste.

 

[04:05] How Do You Dry Yourself After Shower?

 

Grant puts on his robe after a shower and then gets out and dries off once he’s outside. Heavey used to dry when he got out of the shower. But since moving to Colorado, which is pretty cold, he reaches out and grabs his towel. He comes back in the shower to stay warm.

 

[05:18] How Do You Pee?

 

In the (perhaps rare) occasion that Grant stands to pee, he uses the flap in the boxer. So belt and button stay on, and it’s just the zipper and working its way out of the flap.

 

Grant gets upset when companies make underwear without a fly. Although he wears sweatpants all the time, Heavey does the same thing as Grant’s when he’s wearing jeans.

 

[07:44] Do You Wipe Sitting or Standing?

 

Grant does it sitting, which he thinks should be the answer for all. And his friend James, told him he couldn’t imagine how people wipe themselves sitting. So Grant taught him how to do it and he’s been doing this since. Heavey does it standing.

 

[09:05] What’s Your Top Christmas Movie?

 

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or Elf? What’s your top choice? Heavey would have gone either way with this previously. But in the last year or two, he has shifted to 59-41 in favor of Elf.

 

They can both agree that Elf taps into a little bit more of that youthful Christmas spirit. Christmas Vacation is a fun movie, no doubt, but it’s set in the real world. Elf, on the other hand, brings Santa Claus into the picture and all the magical things that come along with Santa so you get to be a kid while watching the movie.

 

[10:44] New Year’s Resolution: Fat Loss

 

The number one resolution for New Years is to lose weight or fat. Grant and Heavey take the whole month to do a series of episodes on different topics related to fat loss.

 

Unfortunately, most people fall off with their resolutions pretty quickly. One thing that keeps people going the most on their resolutions is seeing progress.

 

Heavey hopes that if people are using science-backed methods to understand their approach to fat loss, then they’re more likely to see progress and keep that momentum going. They can then keep their resolution going further and further.

 

[12:05] Diet and Exercise for Fat Loss

 

Research shows that diet in combination with exercise is the most powerful stimuli for creating change in fat. That said, if you paid attention to diet only, you will get a certain amount of results; the same way with doing exercise only. However, if you pay attention to both, research across the board says that it’s the most effective way to lose fat.

 

Most likely; however, exercise plays a smaller role. But Heavey says there is sufficient research showing that exercise is actually one of the most powerful ways to maintain fat loss.

 

The problem most people have is not with losing fat, but losing fat and keeping it off. Exercise is very powerful for maintaining fat loss over a long period of time since you get to increase your caloric expenditure. You’re more active. When you exercise, it encourages you to take other parts of your health more seriously. Grant agrees on this, saying that exercise makes him focus more on other things – like drink less, eat healthier. If he knows he’s working his ass off, he’d skip the french fries.

 

Regardless of the effect of exercise in your fat loss program, the point is to take it seriously sooner rather than later because it should be a part of your fat loss maintenance program.

 

[14:33] Cardio for Fat Loss

 

When it comes to exercise and fat loss, a lot of people relate it to cardio. Heavey discusses two schools of thought for fat loss – the HIIT (high intensity interval training) and the steady state cardio.

 

Grant raises a valid question whether walking for a while is just as effective at burning fat as jogging for a while. Heavey explains that while walking is powerful, you can’t equate it to jogging. (Stay tuned for their future episode on walking and its implications on fat loss.)

 

[15:45] HIIT vs. Steady State Cardio

 

Interval training involves shorter bouts of high effort work periods while steady state cardio involves longer bouts of lower intensity training. For instance, you may do all-out 400m sprints with 5 minutes rest between them versus doing 30 mins on the elliptical machine.

 

HIIT has grown so popular now but there’s not a ton of research that looks at a large group of people where they compare the effectiveness of interval training to longer steady state cardio.

 

Heavey did find a recent meta analysis looking at around 28 studies comparing the two. From that, you can increase the statistical power of the smaller studies. Pool them and use them together to come up with a more powerful observation of the difference between the two approaches.

 

[17:15] HIIT and VO2 Max

 

Grant feels like there’s a difference between running really hard for a short period of time, taking a break, then running really hard again; versus the HIIT they do in the study which is all out. By all out, it means pushing yourself to an extreme that’s beyond just running hard.

 

Heavey says this is one of the problems whenever people hear the purported benefits of interval training. They think it’s the “keto of exercise” because everyone is talking about how great it is. They’re actually not putting in the intensity that went into that original research.

 

Now, one of the ways they filtered the studies was by only looking at the ones that measured the VO2 max or put some parameters around VO2 max and categorized based on that.

 

VO2 max is the measure of your aerobic capacity. If you’re working at your maximum aerobic capacity then your functioning at 100% VO2 max.

 

[19:30] The Study Protocol

 

Back to the meta analysis looking at 28 studies that ended up looking at 837 men and women, had a huge age range of 10.4 years old to 65 years old. The average duration was 12 weeks and varied from 4 to 16 weeks.

 

They categorized the training (that consists of biking or running almost exclusively) into moderate intensity (between 20-60 mins at 40%-59% of VO2 max), high intensity (60-240 seconds at 80%-100% VO2 max), and sprint intervals (80-30 seconds at greater than 100% VO2 max). When you go over 100%, a lot of times, it becomes anaerobic. This means it’s exiting the aerobic domain and entering the anaerobic domain. This means you’ve stopped using oxygen for fuel, and use sugar instead or a combination of oxygen and sugar.

 

[21:40] The Findings of the Study

 

Grant assumes HIIT is going to win, which means it’s the most effective way for fat loss. Heavey goes on to explain that at the end of the studies, the average across that was a loss of 1.38 kg for the HIIT group and 0.91 kg for the steady-state group.

 

Looking at the whole thing, the difference isn’t actually statistically significant. They’re saying that based on the studies they’ve collected, there’s no real difference in fat loss between high intensity training and steady state training.

 

[22:53] Is HIIT the New Fountain of Youth?

 

Heavey explains that one of the biggest impediments for people exercising is they say they don’t have the time to do it. However, the time you do HIIT sessions in total is actually much less per week than the steady-state.

 

Everyone has time to exercise, but it’s just a matter of priorities. People want to prioritize other things in their life. If exercise is not their number one priority, maybe they want to spend less time exercising and get more for the time they spend in the gym. In this case, Heavey thinks the HIIT looks promising since you can spend less time and get the same fat loss results from it.

 

Also, fat loss isn’t the only benefit from “cardio.” Some of the research suggest that HIIT training is more beneficial for reducing insulin, blood lipids, and other inflammatory markers. Not only are we going to lose the same amount of fat in less time than steady state, but we’ll also see some improvement in markers that correlate with other health factors.

 

[25:55] What Type of Fat Loss Exercise Should You Do Then?

 

Back to the study, Heavey says the fat loss for both groups was not very substantial – 2 pounds lost in 12 weeks. That’s three months, which is quite a long time. If you lost three pounds over three months (one pound a month), that’s not very motivating.

 

What this comes down to really, is that if your ultimate goal is fat loss, do what you want to do for training. HIIT training and steady state cardio are roughly equivalent when equated for the amount of energy you expend during them. Some people just like doing it longer, on the bike for example, and they like being intense.

 

Moreover, you could also be lifting weights. Another research has shown that when you look at fat oxidation throughout the day, weight training and cardio are the same. You can get the same results from them. When you’re weight training though, you get added benefit of adding lean mass.

 

Most of the time, people don’t necessarily care to lose fat, but they care to get leaner. This means losing fat and gaining muscle. It can be powerful to beweight training at least in combination with these other things because it will add lean mass or at least help preserve your muscle mass while stimulating fat loss.

 

[28:28] It’s a Vicious Cycle: The More Muscles We Build Up, the Leaner We Get

 

What Heavey wants people to understand is if you just want to get lean and don’t care about losing muscle, you’re actually impairing the ability to maintain that fat loss over the long term. Lean tissue is more metabolically active. The less you have the less calories our body requires on a daily basis. Whereas if we build up muscle mass, our body requires more calories everyday to function. Therefore, it makes it easier for us to be lean.

 

[29:30] Make It a Habit, Get Social Support

 

Sticking to a habit is challenging for people. If you have a workout buddy, it’s easier for you to exercise. It’s been proven that having social support helps improve compliance with training programs and with anything fitness-related.

 

What’s actually insane is this research that says social support cannot be familial. If it’s somebody in your family, it shows no benefit for maintaining compliance, based on research. This doesn’t make sense.

 

[31:25] Whiskey Time! – What’s with These Glaincairn Glasses?

 

Heavey and Grant read an email from one of the podcast’s listeners. It’s from Luke of Australia who asked about the Glencairn glasses. Grant explains they’re designed for drinking whiskey.

 

The idea here is that the narrowing of the glass enables you to really smell what’s going on. This is what you really want to do because so much of our taste buds come from our sense of smell. The problem with these glasses is that if you pour it and you sniff it right away there’s too much alcohol. This can affect your tongue and your nose. If it’s too strong and goes right into your nose, it can burn your sense of smell and you won’t get any of the delicacies.

 

[34:50] Why Not Use Other Glasses?

 

Grant actually learned this trick about all glasses, not just limited to whiskey glasses, but wine glasses as well. Anything that has a ball shape, they’re designed in a way for you to pour the alcohol up until the fattest part of the ball. The shape of it is designed of it is to have enough air for you to to smell it.

 

For example, in wine glasses, you’re trying to expose more of it to air. While the narrow white wine glass, you’re not trying to expose it as much to the air. The same thing with the whiskey glass, you just want to let it breathe for a sec. Otherwise if you sniff it right away, you’d have that alcohol burn your nose.While if you let it breathe, you start to smell the parts of the whiskey that people want you to taste.

 

Grant is taking out a Black Mountain Notes Fumées  (which has that smokey taste). It’s a French whiskey. Grant is happy with its taste. However, the back of the bottle is written in French. And as he looked it up, and the reason it’s spelled as “whisky,” and not “whiskey,” is that they imported it from Scotland. So it’s a blend and they aged it in France. The youngest component is 8 years so Grant feels like it’s cheating. It’s bottled at 45%, and looks very cool. Grant ultimately recommends it.