Does Interval Training Lead to Faster Weight Loss

Going to the gym and slogging it out for a half hour a day is the Health Blog's standard fitness M.O. As it turns out, though, we may be missing some benefits offered by interval training ─ short bursts of intense effort punctuated by periods of lower-intensity exercise.

Now, we're generally wary of fitness fads. But interval training has been around forever, though it's typically been used more by those at the hard-core end of the fitness spectrum. Now, NPR reports this morning, there's some interesting research into the benefits of the practice for those of us who are more moderate in our exercise habits.

In one four-month study, people who rode an exercise bike for 20 minutes and alternated between eight-second sprints and 12-second slow periods lost more fat than those who rode for 40 minutes at a steady pace, NPR says.

'The eight-second sprint is doable by all the groups we've looked at ─ old people, overweight people, everybody so far we've tested has been able to do it,' the researcher behind that study told NPR. 'And in the 20-minute bout, the actual hard exercise is only eight minutes, so it's not actually that much exercise.'