Changing it up to maximize calorie/hour burn

HonestOmnivore

I have not exercised (consistently) for at least four years. Ten years ago I was a regular at the college health center, doing an aerobics class at 6 AM, walking two miles with my parents at 9, walking 2 miles with my husband in the evening and lifting weights 3 days a week.

Today I've uncovered the used elliptical machine I purchased off a friend THREE YEARS AGO, and I'm planning on using this exclusively (for aerobic) for the next 90 days, hoping to get down at least 15 lbs before I start on the treadmill.

My question -from the back of my rusty befuddled brain I seem to remember that for general fitness cross training is best, but for calorie burn you want to do one thing until your body gets efficient at it (like running or swimming) then switch to something different so your body has to learn a new task and being inefficient at it, your body burns more calories until your brain and muscles learn the new task.

If the above is true - will moving from 90 days on the elliptical to the treadmill (I want to do the C25K program) be different enough to take advantage of the inefficiency? Or is running similar to the elliptical workout? What about a stationary bike? Is that too similar? Swimming isn't an option due to lack of time and the distance to the closest pool.

Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated!

Azdak

Yes you may become more efficient, but that also means you will be able to work harder, so your caloric expenditure will not level off or decrease--it can still increase, and probably substantially so as you become more fit. At some point, you may reach a level where it becomes more crucial to introduce variety, but that is a ways off.

The biggest concern with having only one modality is overuse and overtraining. Recovery is an important part of a fitness routine, but that can be active recovery as opposed to complete rest. Active recovery is more of a challenge when you only have one machine. That and boredom.

The best thing to do is to vary your workouts--include different combinations of intensities and durations. As you are building up, you won't have as many opportunities for variety, but do what you can.

Switching from a cross trainer to a treadmill after 90 days will have minimal impact. Whatever short-term (and I do mean short) "benefits" (questionable) that might come from switching to a new modality will be more than offset by the decreased performance you will experience while transitioning to a new activity. When it comes to steady-state type cardio exercise, the adaptation process occurs very quickly.

Don't overthink the process. A lot of exercise "theories" are micro concepts exaggerated to sell infomercial products. Following a consistent program with focused effort will give you plenty of results. Addiing resistance training is much more important than changing cardio modalities.

HonestOmnivore

Thank you Azdak, for taking the time to provide such a complete answer! I really appreciate your directness and as someone who's a little on the analytical side I'm happy to follow your logical recommendations.

Nikki_Z

The problem with becoming more efficient, is that our body if effectively requiring less fuel to perform that task. That's why runners run a lot, and swimmers swim a lot - so on race day you can maintain a higher pace for a longer period of time. If this is your goal, then you've found the correct way to train.

But if your goal is weight loss, then this is not the way to go. For calorie burn, you do NOT want to do the same thing. I see this time and time again and always get questioned about it at work (I work at a gym) - people on the treadmill, elliptical, or whatever for 45 minutes 3-5x/week doing the same thing the whole time - and then they ask me why the haven't lost weight since the first couple of weeks. Like I mentioned earlier, when your body adapts to a movement, it uses less fuel = fewer calories burned.

So then what is the best way to burn calories? The answer = Keep your body guessing. Intervals on any piece of cardio equipment will burn far more calories as your body cannot adapt because it's different every time. I suggest changing the resistance or incline for 1-2 minutes then dropping back to a recovery point for 1-2 minutes. Repeat for as long as you like. You can increase the time of the intervals as you progress. Personally, I get bored quickly when I'm indoors, so this gets me through a cardio workout if I can't get outside. I tend to alternate between resistance and speed or incline, and sometimes I'll change both.

Running is similar to the elliptical, except there is no impact on the elliptical. Running = more calories burned. But starting on the elliptical is good because it gives you a chance to get your cardiovascular system a kick start. Be prepared to not be able to run as long as you go on the elliptical. I suggest adding some walking along with your elliptical training to prepare your body for the impact of running. Also, when you begin running, make sure you start with walk/run intervals to allow your body to adapt.

Hope this helps!

HonestOmnivore

Thanks Nikki - it does.

Yes - my goal is purely fat burning. I'm sure I'll get into shape and at some point be more interested in fitness and heart health etc... but right now I need to get my excess weight OFF!

I am so out of shape that it will take awhile for me to work through the options on the elliptical machine - right now (day two) it's zero incline and zero resistance and I have to go in slow motion or my heart rate goes up too high (yeah- sad I know!). I'm 200 lbs so I'm worried I'll mess up my 43 year old knees if I start running now - I'd like to be around 180 before doing the high impact.

Also because of a high cancer risk I had my ovaries removed a couple months ago (sorry if TMI) so at some point high impact is going to be crucial so that I can build back the bone that is being lost without estrogen. The need to rid my body of estrogen is the main driver behind my determination to lose the fat. My lovely blanket of blubber harbors estrogen, which in turn feeds cancer cells in my body. Due to a genetic mutation my immune system is defective at finding and eliminating cancer cells fed by estrogen (a little more complicated than that but close enough for this discussion).

My husband and I have picked up used exercise equipment over the years - so I have some good options. I have a good quality elliptical machine, a decent recumbent bike, a decent treadmill and a nice weight machine as well as free weights. We live in the North, in the country where there aren't proper shoulders on roads so running or walking outside means driving to town (so ironic really!). That being said, I plan to start running and look forward to running outdoors!

Nikki_Z

Wow!! Good for you to make those goals!

I think using the elliptical and the bike will be good for you. Biking works slightly different muscles than running/elliptical, so it is good to use the two together to cross-train. I often hop on a bike and ride with light resistance when my legs are killing me from a workout or a long run and I find I can walk much better after!! (usually!)

Funny you mention the ovarian removal. I had a client who had a similar issue (or it seems so). She worked hard at the gym and lost quite a bit of weight. She was also around 200lbs. So don't let anything hold you back!! Just start out slow and work your way up.

Remember that you can also control how hard you work with your RPM (rotations per minute) on both the elliptical and the bike. So if your HR increases when you increase the resistance on the elliptical, you can counter this a little by slowing down. The idea of intervals is to increase your HR for a short period and then recover. If 1 minute is too long, start with 20 or 30 seconds and work up to longer intervals.

I live in the North too. In the country. It's great for riding my bike in the summer because there's no city traffic, but it also means there's no street lights so running in the winter is tough for me because it's always dark!!

Azdak

The problem with becoming more efficient, is that our body if effectively requiring less fuel to perform that task. That's why runners run a lot, and swimmers swim a lot - so on race day you can maintain a higher pace for a longer period of time. If this is your goal, then you've found the correct way to train.

But if your goal is weight loss, then this is not the way to go. For calorie burn, you do NOT want to do the same thing. I see this time and time again and always get questioned about it at work (I work at a gym) - people on the treadmill, elliptical, or whatever for 45 minutes 3-5x/week doing the same thing the whole time - and then they ask me why the haven't lost weight since the first couple of weeks. Like I mentioned earlier, when your body adapts to a movement, it uses less fuel = fewer calories burned.

So then what is the best way to burn calories? The answer = Keep your body guessing. Intervals on any piece of cardio equipment will burn far more calories as your body cannot adapt because it's different every time. I suggest changing the resistance or incline for 1-2 minutes then dropping back to a recovery point for 1-2 minutes. Repeat for as long as you like. You can increase the time of the intervals as you progress. Personally, I get bored quickly when I'm indoors, so this gets me through a cardio workout if I can't get outside. I tend to alternate between resistance and speed or incline, and sometimes I'll change both.

Running is similar to the elliptical, except there is no impact on the elliptical. Running = more calories burned. But starting on the elliptical is good because it gives you a chance to get your cardiovascular system a kick start. Be prepared to not be able to run as long as you go on the elliptical. I suggest adding some walking along with your elliptical training to prepare your body for the impact of running. Also, when you begin running, make sure you start with walk/run intervals to allow your body to adapt.

Hope this helps!

Doing some different cardio intervals is an excellent way to train--it can work for beginners, cardiac patients, experienced exercisers, etc. There is an almost infinite variety of intervals that can be designed to fit a number of different needs.

I would disagree with your underlying assumption that the type of interval training you are describing is "keeping the body guessing" and therefore more efficiently burning calories.

First of all, changing cardio modalities requires relatively little adaptation. The main adaptation will be neural in nature, i.e. new patterns of muscle fiber recruitment, and some different patterns of blood shunting. The major part of that adaptation will occur in only a few workout sessions. And, once the adaptation occurs, returning to that activity will not "keep the body guessing" because "the body" will already "know" the activity. If someone is rotating cardio pieces, either within the same workout or every day, there is no "readaptation" or "guessing" going on with each change.

If I become acclimated to a certain activity--treadmill, cross trainer etc--my body is not going to be "fooled" when I change from one machine to another. Even if I do treadmill for a week and then switch to cross trainer for a week, it still is not going to be "fooled" or less efficient. The same with other movements: if I start doing jump squats or burpees, I will be inefficient for the first few times while I adapt to the activity--I also won't be able to work as hard because I cannot perform the movements properly. Once I become more "efficient", I will actually burn *more* calories because I will be able to do the movements with more speed and power. If I do something else for a couple of days and go back to doing jump squats and burpees, again, my body will not be "fooled" into burning more calories--the muscle memory will still be there. If I stop doing that activity long enough to lose that "efficiency", when I resume it again, I'll be more or less back to where I started--burning fewer calories not more because my inefficiency keeps me from putting forth my best effort.

The energy cost for a cardio activity is relatively fixed. For example, running at 6mph has a VO2 of approx 10 METS. I will use my personal example. When I resumed my serious program back in March, running at 6 mph was tough because of my extra weight and lower fitness level. That workload probably represented about 70% of my VO2 max. But the VO2 for that activity was 10 METS. My weight at the time was ~116 kg, which meant that my calorie burn rate was ~1160 Cal/hr. Fast forward to today: If I run 6.0 mph, it represents a lower percentage of my VO2 max--but the VO2 is STILL 10 METS. The fact that I am more fit and more "efficient" has not changed the energy cost of the activity. Because I now weight 91 kg, if I were to run at 6.0 mph, I know would only burn ~910 Cal/hr, but because I am more fit, I actually average about 7.2 mph now, which is a VO2 of about 12 METS. So I am actually at about 1090/hr.

Yes, my calorie rate has gone down somewhat, but that is inevitable with any weight loss program. That's why I lost 17 pounds my first month and now am stable, or losing 1-2 pounds a month. But the increased "efficiency" and fitness improvement allows me to work a lot harder which offsets most of the "decrease" in my Cal/hr burn rate.

We will agree that exercise variety is critical, whether you are sticking to one modality or a variety. Basic exercise physiology states that a varied training stimulus is necessary for continued improvement, and for most people a varied routine helps to prevent overtraining and injuries. But that is a different mechanism that the idea that you can somehow "keep the body guessing" and thus burn more calories.

What is most likely happening with those clients who are doing the same cardio routine and not seeing results is that A) they aren't burning that many Calories to begin with and they are accommodating their food and ADL levels to match the relatively modest increase in exercise calories and thus remaining in energy balance. There are plenty of people who do the exact same routine every day (e.g. walk 5 miles) and are very successful at losing weight.

Nikki_Z

When I mentioned intervals "keep the body guessing", it was intended as a surface comment. I have a Bachelor's of Science in Kinesiology and am currently undertaking my Master's of Science in Applied Health Sciences, specializing in Environmental Ergonomics (basically how human perform physiologically and cognitively in extreme environments). I have studied and understand a lot in terms of neural adaptations to exercise, however it's very complex, and most of the time, it's WAY too much information.

When your body become more efficient at something, it required less fuel BECAUSE it is more efficient. If I ran 5km they way I used to run 5km when I first started 6 years ago, I would definitely use WAY less calories. I'm much faster now, so I probably use the same amount of fuel as I did then, but I finish 5km much faster than I used to.

I agree, you don't become less efficient when you switch from a cross-trainer to the treadmill. That wasn't what I was trying to say at all. It's the change of intensity during a cardio workout that prevents the cardiovascular system to "adapt" to a certain level of intensity.

HonestOmnivore

I think both of you might be under estimating how nonathletic I am :bigsmile:

It will take me a few weeks just to get muscle memory to function well enough to keep the elliptical machine going the right direction! I've been trying to learn to juggle for about three months - some people can train them selves to perform a physical task MUCH faster than others - I'm on the bad end of that scale!

My sisters were amazed when I learned to fly fish (I won't tell you how many years that took) because I never seem to get the hang of things. Needless to say, I'm really good at getting a fish hook out of sweatshirts, hats, baskets and SKIN. :grumble: just to name a few.

I think the two of you may be arguing semantics?

Azdak

I think both of you might be under estimating how nonathletic I am :bigsmile:

It will take me a few weeks just to get muscle memory to function well enough to keep the elliptical machine going the right direction! I've been trying to learn to juggle for about three months - some people can train them selves to perform a physical task MUCH faster than others - I'm on the bad end of that scale!

My sisters were amazed when I learned to fly fish (I won't tell you how many years that took) because I never seem to get the hang of things. Needless to say, I'm really good at getting a fish hook out of sweatshirts, hats, baskets and SKIN. :grumble: just to name a few.

I think the two of you may be arguing semantics?

Semantics AND pedantics.....but that doesn't make it any less fun.......

HonestOmnivore

I was just talking to my BFF who has her masters in physiology and is currently working in a cardo-rehab facility. I was talking to her about this and how I think that when you get good muscle memory and or efficiency at a specific activity you don't burn as many calories to do the activity.

I brought up my attempts to learn sports, and learn how to juggle and my friend offered "sounds like your muscles have dementia!":laugh: