Thank you, BootCampJoey

I began following @BootCampJoey last week (admittedly for shallow reasons - yes, he's very pretty), but I've come to learn that he's incredibly gifted with his fitness and nutrition knowledge, too. He posted a link tonight to an article that he wrote for SceneOutSD.com. I'm hoping he writes more for them because he's clearly got a lot to say and there's a lot more I want to know about what he wrote.

Joey says, "so as your lean muscle diminishes, your metabolism (your body’s calorie-burning ability) drops. If you do nothing to stem the loss, you could wake up on your 65th birthday and find that you have lost half of your lean body mass and replaced it with twice as much fat!" And while that should be common sense, unfortunately, not a lot of people think that far in advance. So many of us want immediate results (Guilty, part of one right here) and we don't realize that if we want true, lasting results, we can't be so short-sighted.

Summed up, Joey discusses the benefits of HIIT (high-intensity interval training) opposed to standard cardio work in regards to actual fat burning. In a different article I read last night, it was further explained to me that during HIIT, you increase your anaerobic threshold, which (without going into lengthy, scientific explanation) means more muscle is built and more fat is burned.

The thing that constantly amazes me is that given how popular HIIT is becoming that there are still thousands of people who stick with the same boring routine: 10 minute warm up, 3-5 miles at a steady pace on the treadmill and a 10-minute cool down. That's anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour spent exercising and you're getting a fraction of the results you can get by doing a work-out that can take as little as four minutes (by doing Tabata, which is what I do now) or 15-20-minutes (by doing standard HIIT, what I did before I discovered Tabata). I just don't understand why someone would choose to work harder and longer when the results are so much better working shorter and smarter.

Anyway...something to chew on for thought tonight. As always - research, read, investigate, question and clarify everything you read. I don't have all the answers, but I pay mighty-close attention to those who do.

Thank you, Joey for allowing me to feature your article on my blog. xo