For volume: For intensity:

As we all know, the basis for effective fat loss is the calorie deficit: the amount of calories consumed must be less than the amount of calories expended. The major method for expending calories is your basal metabolic rate, which is the energy your body and brain need to survive – digestion and non-exercise activity thermogenesis also play a role in the number of calories expended. So, the key to effective fat loss as a runner is increasing our basal metabolic rate by maintaining or increasing muscle mass, the more metabolically active tissue, while still maintaining a calorie deficit and fuelling appropriately to get the most out of our workouts. With the appropriate combination of diet and exercise, it is possible. So one method to expend more calories on a daily basis is to exercise. Activities such as running, cross training, strength training and yoga can all burn calories, but let’s take a closer look at running. At the beginning of your running career, your physiological systems are like a fuel-guzzling diesel engine. Your runs burn a ton of calories and your running economy is, well, lacking. With consistent training, your cardiovascular system adapts to the training stress by: Once believed as the go-to training method for fat loss, low-intensity training has since been bumped from the top spot and replaced with high-intensity training, also known as high-intensity interval training ( hiit). hiit incorporates hard and easy periods of high- and low-intensity efforts. This method of training is commonly seen in more serious runners looking for faster race time as this type of training can enhance both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems simultaneously and develop these systems better than low-intensity running alone.

Regular performance of hiit- type workouts has been shown to be effective at reducing body fat, however, “the mechanisms underlying the fat reduction are undetermined but may include hiit- induced fat oxidation during and after exercise and suppressed appetite,” said a 2011 study on fat loss and exercise. hiit has been found to significantly lower insulin resistance, which increases the body’s capacity for fat oxidation, which basically means, you’re better able at using fat for fuel during workouts (depending on exercise intensity) and in the recovery period, post-workout.

So to ensure that you burn the most calories from running, you need to either adjust the volume or the intensity of your runs. This may look like: • carefully increasing your weekly distance by about 10 • per cent, adding a short, hard-interval workout and a tempo effort per week. In addition to expending calories during the run, hiit has been shown to be effective at increasing the energy required for postexercise metabolism as well, otherwise known as epoc (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). So not only are you expending calories during your run, you’re also burning calories recovering from the run, hours later. This bodes well for tipping the calories-in/ calories-out equation in your favour. Another avenue to expend calories is through strength training. Lifting weights in a circuit-style fashion can improve your resiliency as a runner and also improve your body composition by increasing your muscle mass. Performing compound exercises that target your major muscle groups in a circuit-style workout with loads that challenge you in the 8–10 repetition range seem to maximize your body’s post-workout metabolism and increase epoc for several hours, thus leading to more calories burned overall.