EPOC Part 1 - Start the Fire

Back again to talk about fat loss and burning those calories by using High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). This week it’s about EPOC which stands for Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption. This can also be defined as the “recovery of your metabolic rate back to pre exercise levels”. This can take several minutes if only doing low intensity workouts or up to 38 hours if doing intensive interval training. EPOC is a fat loss gift that keeps on giving!

The lunge is commonly utilised in HIIT

Basically you keep burning calories at an increased rate after an interval workout or a high intensity resistance training session if you train this way, but if you do choose to train at a lower intensity you won’t get the same effect, your metabolism will stop burning calories soon after the activity. This is quite a new form of training a lot of people don’t know about and are still training the old fat burning zone methods or just long, slow cardio workouts where they are sitting on treadmills, bikes and rowing machines for hours keeping their heart rates steady. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying this isn’t good for you but it won’t burn calories as effectively if it’s fat loss you are looking for. HIIT is ideal for creating EPOC and as a consequence a more time efficient way to lose body fat. What is actually happening is you train at an intensity that causes you to create an oxygen debt (your muscles don’t get enough oxygen so lactic acid is created). Due to this debt created you must get oxygen to pay the debt back. This occurs in the period following your training or activity. It doesn’t mean you have to be gasping furiously for breath like a fish out of water but it does mean a lot higher intensity is needed to get the desired EPOC effect.

Another way of looking at it is HIIT can cause a bushfire effect by creating EPOC inside you. Think of a big bush fire, you know it doesn’t just burn for 2 hours and then burn out-it slowly burns out so that over time there is no fire anymore. The peak of the fire may have been hours ago but there are still flames being produced for a long time afterwards. That is how HIIT and EPOC works but with calories instead of fire so the aim is that we can keep the fire going as long as we can which means calories burn while you’re sleeping or sitting down in your office the next day and you don’t even realise it.

You want your metabolism firing like this to lose body fat

Come back to Café Cacophony soon to see some interesting ideas as to how to get EPOC or to start your internal fire burning.