I there, I've been walking for a long time and I've found it doesn't do much for me anymore (weight wise). I've been reading up and it seems that HIIT does more for fat burning and it much shorter time. So, today I got out my cardio step and my clock, and jogged on and off the step for 1 min and walked quickly around the room for 1 min and did that for 30 min. By 20min, I was ready to quit, I was out of breath and my legs hurt, good sign.

Is this a good starting point? Do I need to do more or longer? I was wondering if I would reach my goals faster if I did HIIT 2 x a day. I would also like to start incorporating weights into my new excercise routine. I was thinking of HIIT M,W,F and weights Tue and Thur. I still wonder if I need to do more cardio, but then I wonder how much cardio really does for weight loss.
Any ideas and knowledge would be helpfull. Thanks

No takers? Really? I'm just not sure if I should do HIIT daily, every other day. Does strength training aid in loosing weight? So many question, and I wish someone out there had all the answers.

HIIT: I've read many times that you don't do this every day. It also has a supposed 24-hour residual burn effect, which is why it's so effective. I like HIIT and try to do it 2 or 3 times per week max. I like the elliptical, so what I do to start (when I'm not in top notch cardio shape, like right now) is 5 minutes moderate warmup, then every other minute (on minutes 5, 7, 9 etc.) I do 30 seconds all-out for the high intensity, then drop back to moderate till the next odd minute, and repeat. I start with about 8 to 10 of these high intensity segments, then drop back to moderate for the rest of the time I want to do, usually 20 to 30 minutes max, no more. I had a hard time accepting this, but with HIIT cardio, less really is more. I read that a 20 minute HIIT session was even more effective than 60 minutes of slower steady state cardio. With steady state cardio, you just have to keep doing more and more time as your body adapts. Not true with HIIT, which is obviously a better and more effective use of your time. Also, with steady state cardio what you burn is pretty much what you burn WHILE doing the cardio. As I mentioned before, HIIT has a residual burn from metabolism boost that can be as long as 24 hours.

Weights: Absolutely yes, a good and important thing. Especially as we women age, we are losing muscle and must rebuild and maintain it. Everything I read now says weights are far and away more important than cardio for health and weight loss. Increased muscle leads to a faster metabolism, which enables better weight loss if you are eating to lose, and helps maintain weight loss after you reach goal. Increased muscle mass burns some extra calories daily, whereas fat is inert, it burns nothing, it just sits there looking ugly! And of course, there is the very important side benefit of how weight exercise strengthens your bones.

I used to do Body for Life and have always liked its weight approach, especially how it splits upper body and lower body into two separate workout sessions. My workout goals are at least TWO weight workouts per week (one upper, one lower), and 2 or 3 cardio sessions, 2 of which would be HIIT type workouts. If I manage a 3rd cardio, it would be moderate and steady, not HIIT. I also do stretching after weights.

I used to just kill myself with intensive programs. Body for Life was 6 days a week: 3 weight workouts, 3 cardio sessions, plus the 6 meals a day thing. TOO MUCH! I'm learning that SOME moderate exercise is fantastic, you do not have to kill yourself to get results.

I am not sure if there are really HIIT out there.

Back in college, I ran intervals -- 20 1/4 miles 95% performance with about the same time for recovery -- jog/walk/crawl about 1/8 mile or less and go again. Took about an hour to complete. Unlike most workouts where you are fully recovered about the time you finish showering, that tended to hang around -- elevated heart rate for about 2-3 hours. Being in good shape, the next days workout was pretty much normal - although we tended to do "slow" distance the next day eg 10 miles, talking rate. Talking rate is not so fast you could not carry on a conversation.

I cannot image anything I have seen on tv that even approximating that level of effort. So I am suspect of the calorie claims, etc. Suggesting it effects you for 24 hours is just garbage.

As far I am concerned, all workouts are continuous effort for the duration of the exercise. There are not breaks in 40-60 minutes on the elliptical or running or biking. Generally the goal is a sustained pace for the entire time. As a caveat, at nearly 60, working out every day appears to be too taxing. Every other day seems reasonable. It could be that I need to train longer to get to the point where daily workout are easier. Starting back after decades off has taken much longer than I wanted to believe.

How often HIIT? Once a week is plenty. Too strenuous for more often. Especially if you are working out every day.

Why do it? Generally it is to build up speed endurance -- how long you can go full out. This is hard to do. Most people are not training for races or competition. So for them, not sure why one would want to do it. I personally would think you want to get to daily exercise, 45-60 minutes per day, at a "I cannot talk without getting out of breath" rate. This does not have anything to do with HIIT training. That is just good aerobic training/exercise.


As far as weight lose, I had not seen anything for 2 years of working out after decades of not exercising. Only after I started to diet did I lose weight.

IMHO it is possible that exercising could assist weight loss by cleaning out the glycogen reserves. I think that those reserves could rebuild themselves over time. Obviously, exercise is good for other reasons.

One thing I've always noticed is that long distance runners (I'm thinking competitors) are really lean, almost skinny, whereas sprinters seem to have great bodies, with muscles, but lean. I like the sprinter look better, which is why the HIIT thing makes sense.

I like the HIIT a couple of times a week purely because of the cardiovascular aspect. I simply cannot run or go at a very fast pace for very long, but the HIIT intervals are great. When I'm in better shape, I up the interval to a minute, sometimes 2 minutes, and I lessen the moderate interval, but that takes time. Since I've always had something resembling asthma, this has been great for my lungs and I like what the regularity of it does. The steady state cardio never helped that much, although I could do it for very long periods of time.

I will say that while I've worked out for years, when I have upped my cardio efforts I have simply NEVER seen any huge weight losses from it, this just doesn't happen for me, much as I wanted it to!

There's another HIIT discussion going on in this thread.