Resistance Training, Fat Loss and the Afterburn Effect

by Alwyn Cosgrove

We've found (and I've written about it recently) that weight training burns more calories than we originally thought.
Why were we wrong?

Because we were using a measurement of aerobic work to determine how many calories were burned. However, anaerobic work is a different animal.

But what about EPOC?

EPOC or “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption” is defined scientifically as the “recovery of metabolic rate back to pre-exercise levels” and it’s generally used to describe the “afterburn” effect. A very simple way of thinking about EPOC is that when you do certain types of training you exert yourself beyond what your body is capable of handling (i.e. your body can’t keep up); it then uses the next 12, 24, or even 36 hours to ‘catch up’ metabolically. ‘Catch up’ = burning calories.

So once again, we're using a measurement of aerobic work (oxygen consumption) to determine the post-workout caloric burn from anaerobic work.

But if we were wrong about the calories during the workout when using this measure, then this is no more accurate - we'd be wrong about the calories AFTER the workout too, as we're using the same method of measuring caloric burn.

So what are the exact numbers for a resistance training based fat loss program? I have no idea. But my best estimates are that they are about 75% higher than we thought during the workout and probably around 50% higher post workout.

In other words, a 30 minute, 300-calorie workout with a 100 calorie "afterburn" (calculated the old way) may be more likely to be a 525 calorie workout and 150 cals from afterburn when calculated the new way -- or 675 calories total.

The last question is this: What if we used a resistance training program designed to burn calories (as opposed to just a standard weight training program) and monitored and tweaked it over the last ten years with hundreds of clients, so that it was even more effective? (i.e. exactly what we've done at Results Fitness)

Could that 300 calories that we thought were being burned, actually be closer to 800 or 900?