Has the steady state beast got you? Do you have to run farther and farther at your usual pace? Or add time to your elliptical session to achieve the same calorie burn? Or to keep your weight steady? Maybe you’re doing the same amount of exercise and still eating right but the results have changed – your weight loss has plateaued or weight maintenance seems more challenging.
It’s not your age or your motivation – it’s biology. The good news is you are paying the price for becoming more fit - a mile used to reliably deliver a heart rate in the 160s to 170s and 128 calories burned, now it is 130s and 90 calories. If you are also loosing weight you are also paying the (good) price that there is less of you to need and burn calories during exercise and throughout the day. The same duration of steady state effort in activities like walking, jogging, swiming, or using the step mill won’t make the same demands of your body month after month or year after year. Especially true if you favor just one or two activities – you become very efficient in the motion of your body, more at ease in the exercise, and less exertion is required. (Indeed this is how we adapt to endurance events – the swim, the run, or the biking becomes easier to extend.)
Consider this graph. Jane enters Boot at 165lbs having been sedentary except for walking her dogs. As she gets closer to her ideal weight (and body fat/muscle composition – not shown), she sees a decline in calories burned. A steady pace that burned 500 calories an hour when she was deconditioned, now, at lower body weight and greater fitness, only delivers 350 calories of demand. If she extends her work-out by 30% she can still burn 500 calories total but getting up earlier and spending longer on the treadmill is a beast.
You can escape the beast and you can reclaim a big calorie burn (and comparable fat mobilization) in a short period of time if you get intense and varied in your activities. Bursts of intensity crank up your heart rate and demands on muscle within workouts. They prevent a steady state rut by amplifying demand for oxygen and fuel. They fit within almost any form of exercise – ropes during weight training; sprinting for a block or 30 seconds; rowing or jumping rope before/after a sculpt class, or increasing resistance on the arc trainer while simultaneously increasing rpm. You’ll not only burn more calories during the same allotted time for exercise but your overall metabolism will stay boosted longer after your workout. The more high intensity intervals you fit into your exercise the faster you’ll see different results.*
K. Hartmann, MD, PhD
*Remember use good sense. This blog is not intended to provide medical advice. You and your care provider need to confer about what if any restrictions apply and what goals are appropriate.