By: Total Trainer Team
"Surely jogging can't make you fat!", I hear you cry. "Jogging is exercise and exercise makes you thin", you protest. Well, the simple truth is that steady state exercise, as jogging is - running at the same speed over a prolonged period, raises hormones in the body that encourage your body to actually store more fat rather than burn excess body fat. Cortisol is one of the main hormones released by the body during steady state exercise and it is this that helps to break down muscle mass (not great when you're looking to lose weight as muscle mass increases the number of calories you burn in a given day) as well as stressing the body into thinking it needs to store fat in case of future bouts of stress (i.e. long periods of exercise).
If not jogging, then what?
So, if you want to increase weight loss and help burn more body fat perform High Intensity Interval Trainining (HIIT) exercises, which call for you to intersperse high intensity of exercise over short periods (30 seconds to a minute) with low intensity activity recovery periods (30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on your level of fitness).