Exercise in little spurts? - 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community

Steen · 07-26-2008, 08:25 PM

Hi Ladies. I will be starting SB shortly and had a question about exercise. I like to walk on my treadmill for about 45 minutes, but lately I've been reading that it's better to do 10 minute intervals throughout the day. Apparently it is better for weight loss. Any thoughts on what I should do?

Fat Melanie · 07-26-2008, 08:39 PM

I have heard of interval training, where you do intervals of cardio and intervals of strength training, or intervals of like fast cardio, and then slower, then fast again (or something like that) to be more effective at burning fat. I also heard that to get your exercise in when you're busy, to do 10 minutes or so until you've come up with a daily total of an hour or so.

I didn't know that doing 10 minutes here and there rather than 45 mins all at once would burn more fat... if that's the case, I would gladly do that then an hour all at once.

Wonder if anyone else has any info pertaining to this.

greeneyes490 · 07-26-2008, 10:08 PM

I had heard the same thing and did alot of reading and everything that I found that was from a reputable source all said that your heart rate needs to reach a certain point (for a certain amount of time) before it will start burning fat storages and that breaking up excersise into short spurts will not accomplish this....so it looks like it has to be a minimum of 20 min (plus 5 min warm up and 5 min cool down) is the bare minimum and even at that it is still recommended 45-60min of steady excersise that gets you into that burning zone. But if you aren't active at all then I would say anything is better than nothing...but for more consistant results the longer is the way to go....I wish it weren't

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zeffryn · 07-27-2008, 10:07 AM

I've done interval training and while I like it with weights, I don't like it with cardio. Like GreenEyes mentioned, I never got my heart rate really up there...and when I did, it was time to stop. Plus, maybe it is just me, but I really benefit from a warm up - I can't just jump into a long run without a warm-up period.

thunderbegone · 07-27-2008, 03:17 PM

I think you would be better off doing a least 20-30 minutes at a time.