As the title of this article suggests there is one simple rule when it comes to loosing fat from your body. If you eat less than you burn off you will loose weight. FACT!

So your wondering why this article is about to carry on, well unfortunatly its not that simple. If your looking just to simply loose weight than yes you can stop reading now, adjust your diet and with a small amount of will power simply watch the pounds drop off! But im guessing your like me and not only want to loose weight, but keep muscle, this means just loosing fat!! Possibly easier than it sounds!

Were not talking about the diet side of fat loss however, if you want that then click the link at the bottom or HERE.

So how do you train to loose fat but keep the muscle youv'e spent so much time and money to achieve. (I certainly wouldn't want to see a single pound of mine go missing) So im going to introduce to method of Cardio work called High Intensity Interval Training.

To explain this as briefly as possible, train like a marathon runner to look like a marathon runner (low body fat, small muscle mass) or train like a sprinter (large muscle mass, low body fat), im guessing your looking more for the sprinter kind of physique?!

Don't get me wrong challenging yourself and every now and then going on a 10 mile jog will do you no harm at all and once a month this could do you a world of good, not only to your body but also mentally as change is always good!

But H.I.I.T is definetly the way forward with what were looking for. Firstly it can help to make your metabolism quicker, If you want to change your metabolism, you have to increase muscle mass and increase your muscle’s oxidative capacity. Your muscles have these energy producing units called ‘mitochondria’ and this is where ATP are made and fats are burned.

The more mitochondria you have and the more active they are the greater oxidative capacity you will have for fat loss. HIIT increases mitochondrial capacity and you actually increase the amount of mitochondria you produce. Studies show that you get greater fat loss through high intensity training because of the increase in oxidative capacity. Whereas with LIT you’re only burning calories at that precise moment, there’s no 24 hour energy expenditure (boost in metabolism) and it hurts you down the line because your body adjusts to it and you end up needing more to lose fat. With HIIT you are burning calories at the moment but you actually change the muscles metabolism and it boosts your metabolism because you increase the mitochondria density of your muscle, so you increase the muscles oxidative capacity and you really do burn more calories.

I see person after person after person, doing endless hours a week of L.I.T and it shows how quickly the body adjusts. How often has a fat bitch come up to you in the gym and bragged about burning 9000 calories on the seated bike, well why the fuck isn't she skinny!! Its because this whales metabolism has adjusted, basically It just doesn’t cut it because it’s just a calorie burn at that time, not 24 hour energy expenditure. If you do LIT all the time, you’re basically trading calories in and calories out and you can cut these same calories through diet and still get the same effects.

Subjects this was tested on lost a couple of pounds the first week and after that they lost nothing. This happened because their metabolism completely adjusted to that and that became their new set point to what they had to do just to maintain. LIT with a low calorie diet is terrible for fat loss and could cause muscle loss. During a low calorie diet, LIT cardio is more catabolic (muscle wasting) towards muscle as opposed to HIIT cardio being much more muscle sparing.
The reason being that your metabolism gets so adjusted to LISS and you constantly have to do more and more and people don’t understand when you are on a low calorie diet, it usually ends up being low carb, so once you are glycogen depleted (stored carbs in muscle), your body is going to look for energy to rely on and guess what it goes after? Protein! Once it goes after protein, then you start to see catabolism (muscle wasting).

So how do you perform H.I.I.T, firstly i would make my way down to the local retailer that sells a stop watch with a timer on it. Simply set out one day in your gym gear and watch. Do a gentle jog to warm up make sure everything is loose then simply sprint for 10 seconds, walk for 30 seconds then sprint for 10 and do this 10 times.
-Sprint 10 seconds
-Walk 30 seconds
And repeat 9 more times (10 in total)
Using your stop watch to time the periods.
Now as with all training you need to progress in order to overload your body and keep results coming. What i would do after a introductory week of H.I.I.T is increase the sprinting time up to 15 seconds. Then the next time try to do 11, then 12 repetitions. As you can see to progress and keep results coming you must either;

1. Increase the time sprinting for.
2. Decrease the res periods
3. Increase the repititions (times sprinting is performed)
With everything i tell people to do i advise using a training diary to track your progresion and this is no different, decide before you go out wha your going to change from your previous session and simply attempt to perform that. If you do write it down and if you dont write it down then next time you know what youv'e got to aim for. Keeping a log like this helps to keep yourself motivated and gets rid of any guess work involved in your fitness goals.

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