This One Workout Drives 29 Percent More Fat Loss, Says Science

It's an eternal question for which you'll find countless answers: What's the single best workout for losing weight? Some urge you to walk. Others say you need to lift weights to build muscle mass—which in turn burns more fat. (Spoiler alert: They're not wrong.) Others say that hopping on the treadmill is your surest way to torch more calories. Others astutely note that the single greatest exercise for losing weight is doing what you love that will result in you actually doing it.

But according to a meta-analysis of more than 786 studies on the subject published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, there is a different answer (assuming you're eating the right foods and not the wrong ones): interval training. "Interval training and [moderate-intensity continuous training (MOD)] both reduce body fat percentage," conclude the researchers. "Interval training provided 28.5% greater reductions in total absolute fat mass than MOD."

In another meta-analysis published in the journal Sports Medicine, researchers found that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) "significantly reduced total, abdominal, and visceral fat mass, with no differences between the sexes," while also noting that exercise that forced people to exceed "90% peak heart rate" (in other words: it's really intense exercise) was the most effective in losing weight. "HIIT is a time-efficient strategy to decrease fat-mass deposits, including those of abdominal and visceral fat mass," the researchers conclude.

The researchers also noted that running and sprinting were more effective than cycling in "reducing total and visceral mass."

These studies are among several that extol the benefits of interval training, which is defined as doing short bursts of rigorous, rapid-fire exercise. "If people are looking to improve performance in the most time-effective way, and if they're looking to improve health in the most time effective way, then I think incorporating interval training is a very good strategy," says Martin Gibala, Ph.D., professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and perhaps the world's foremost expert on the science of high-intensity interval training.
If you're interested in trying a running and sprinting HIIT workout, read on, because we've included a great one right here. And for more news, make sure you're fully up to speed on the 100 Unhealthiest Foods on the Planet.