‘South Beach Diet’ follow-up expands options

The Pounds Melted Away
Here’s how we transformed Susan’s 1-hour treadmill program into a fat—busting, calorie-devouring interval training program. I instructed Susan to cut her treadmill time back to about 20 minutes every other day. Instead of walking at a constant pace for her entire workout, as she had been doing, she should mix it up. That is, after a warmup, she should alternate short bursts of walking very fast with recovery periods of slower walking. (See page 109 to get started on Phase 1 Interval Walking.)

Depending on the workout goal for the day, Susan could do several fast-slow intervals within 20 minutes. As her endurance improved, she would be able to spend more time doing fast spurts and less time in the slower recovery periods, gradually adding more repetitions if time permitted. In addition, she wouldn’t be bored: When you do interval training, your workouts vary so they’re more interesting, and the time seems to fly by.

Another benefit of the program was that on alternate days, Susan would strengthen her core muscles, which she had been neglecting by doing only cardio.

Susan was skeptical but agreed to give it a try.

When I saw Susan about a month later, I didn’t have to ask how she was doing. I could see the good results with my own eyes. Those last 10 unwanted pounds were fading away. And, thanks to the core component of the program, Susan was standing straighter and looking stronger and better toned.

The Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong
At this point, many of you may be thinking, This contradicts nearly everything I’ve been told about exercise. And you’re right, it does. In the past, we believed that the best way to burn fat was to work at your training heart rate, which is about 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. Once you knew your training heart rate, you were told to take your pulse or wear a heart-rate monitor during exercise to make sure you maintained that level. You were also told that you needed to work for at least 20 minutes before you started burning fat. We now know that this simply is not true.

Interval training is not new. Endurance athletes like marathoners and professional cyclists have used this technique for years to help them perform at higher levels. But now there is growing evidence that interval training can also be a huge boon to nonathletes who are trying to lose weight and improve their fitness. An abundance of good science supports interval training as a great way to burn fat and calories, and research also shows that it provides better results than working at a constant moderate pace for longer periods of time.

In a 2007 study conducted at the University of Guelph in Ontario, researchers had women in their early twenties do an interval training program consisting of 10 sets of 4 minutes of hard cycling with 2 minutes of rest between each set. After seven 1-hour sessions over 2 weeks, all eight women in the study showed a 36 percent increase in fat burning. This finding held true for women who were fit, as well as for those who were less fit. So much for the myth that you can’t burn fat working at a high intensity! The women also showed a 13 percent improvement in cardiovascular fitness, which means their hearts and lungs were better able to send oxygen to working muscles, which is important whether you are working out or simply going about your daily activities.

Burning calories is critical to shedding pounds and maintaining a healthy weight. And on the calorie-burning front, interval training is the clear winner. A landmark study conducted by Darlene Sedlock, PhD, and her colleagues at Purdue University found that it took only 19 minutes for a high-intensity exercise group to burn the same 300 calories that it took a low-intensity group 30 minutes to burn. Even more interesting, the high-intensity group continued to burn more calories long after the exercise period ended, compared with the low-intensity group.

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