by Russ Klettke

Want to lose weight? If you’re a guy your first thoughts probably lean toward exercise. Your diet plays an essential role in managing weight, but a smarter, long-term approach includes working out. Here’s why: simply losing weight through diet does nothing to prevent future weight gain. Once the dieter backslides to former eating habits, the pounds come back.

By creating a more fit body – with increased muscularity and cardiovascular capacity – you increase your body’s ability to burn more calories. This is because muscle is more metabolically active than fat, burning 50 to 70 calories a day per pound, just to exist, versus a pound of fat, which needs only 3 calories per day. The more fit you are, the more calories you burn – and the less an occasional bowl of ice cream will settle in on your abdominals.

This doesn’t have to mean spending more time at the gym. Intense exercise can actually take less time. In fact, there are high intensity training programs where an entire day’s session can be completed in about 22 minutes. Such a program allows no rest between sets; instead, you make quick jumps between muscle groups – e.g., legs to core to shoulders, all three in about 90 seconds. These highly choreographed routines are usually taught in coached, small-group classes.

But it’s wholly possible do it on your own, on either a small or large scale. First, understand the fundamental science behind it.

Better at dropping fat, and it might help you to live longer

A 1995 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA; Lee, et al.) showed that vigorous exercise – competitive rowing, for example, compared to leisurely jogging – was associated with longer life. Other studies (Talanian, et al.) illustrated how intense exercise is linked to greater amounts of fat reduction and better retention of muscle mass and strength.

So how is this achieved? A series of studies by Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., who is the fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts, identified a variety of exercise techniques that he details in his book, “High Intensity Strength Training” (Healthy Learning Publishers, 2002). One is the “super slow” method, where you raise or lower a weight on a five to ten second interval (try it with a moderate weight). Another is to work a particular weight-resistance exercise to complete muscle failure, where you cannot perform another rep, then immediately reduce the weight by 10-20 percent, and attack the same exercise again, to failure, with no more than five seconds rest between the two sets.

It’s possible to push a cardiovascular exercise – running, swimming, bicycling, even an elliptical trainer – to intensity as well. Start out at a medium pace, then after about 45 seconds increase your speed (and incline, if on a treadmill, or running in hilly terrain) for 10, 20, 30, 45 or 60 seconds, to a point where your lungs can barely draw in oxygen fast enough. If you’re able to measure your heart rate, shoot for 85 percent of your maximum HR capacity (the formula for this is to subtract your age from 220 to get your 100 percent capacity, then calculate where 85 percent would fall: e.g., a 42 year old person’s HR maximum would be 178; 85 percent of that is about 151 beats per minute).

The challenge of intensity training includes mustering the will to push these limits. You have to be willing to endure discomfort – not only muscle fatigue, but an occasional, momentarily nauseous stomach. The queasiness should subside quickly while muscle soreness might last a few days (soreness indicates muscle growth).

Of course with this and all forms of training, you need to check with your doctor to make sure you are capable of exercising at this level. If you are new to training, it’s best to start with basic strength and cardiovascular exercises, then consistently and gradually work up to higher intensity over several months.