Fat loss is all about caloric expenditure. We must burn more calories than we take in. While on the quest for fat loss, many people place far too much focus on how many calories they are burning during their exercise sessions. If you train in the proper way, you can actually greatly enhance the total amount of calories burned with your exercise program by taking advantage of additional calories burned after the training program is completed. This is known as Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption. Scientifically speaking, it is the recovery of metabolic rate back to pre-exercise levels and requires several minutes for light exercise, several hours for hard intervals and 12 to 24 hours or even longer of prolonged, exhaustive exercise. What this basically means is how many additional calories your body will burn after the exercise session has been completed in order to return your body to normal. If an individual is able to work out at a higher intensity, the more metabolic disturbance; the more energy your body will need to expend to bring it back down to normal. The body needs to replenish muscle glycogen contained in the muscle that’s been depleted during the workout, restoring the blood lactate levels to normal and bringing down the heart rate and body temperature. This is a major source of energy expenditure, which occurs during recovery, but is directly the result of the exercise bout and is frequently ignored in most calculations of the energy expenditure of various activities. These activities that raise EPOC should be the first priority in a fat loss program.
