Everything That Burns More Fat Than Jogging

Most people jog to lose this, but there's one exercise that burns twice as much fat, and it's not what you'd expect. We found it using the world's most accurate calorie Tracker to test 12 popular cardio exercises measuring not just total calories, but fat burn and carb burn. But let's start with the one every kid knows how to do, jump rope. To see how calorie and fat burn differs based on fitness level. I've also convinced Dennis to join me, who's been struggling to find a cardio exercise that's both effective and enjoyable. We don't have time for that now. The jump rope workout we're doing is considered hiit high intensity interval training. You push hard, rest briefly, and then repeat. Now, this type of cardio exploded in popularity because of the so called afterburn effect. By pushing your body past its limits, apparently your body keeps burning extra calories even hours after your workout is over. To find out if that's actually true later on. All right, so I'm not going to share the results with Dennis till the end, but for me, 10 minutes, 146 calories. And compared to my Apple Watch, it said 135 calories. We'll continue measuring the accuracy of the apple watch and even cardio machines, and the results are not what I was expecting. As for Dennis, even though he had to stop almost every 10 seconds, he still managed to burn off his favorite number, 69 calories. I'm never coordinates. It's not very efficient. But we also wanted to measure the afterburn. We're leaving the mask on for another 20 minutes to see how many extra calories you actually burn. Surprisingly, after 20 minutes, that added up to only 28 extra calories for me and just 8 for Dennis. My heart rate, it only got up to about 70% of my max true high intensity. Your heart rate should get up to at least 85%, especially if I want to maximize the afterburn. That was certainly intense, but I think it's also just a tricky exercise to get my heart rate up. For me, it's probably not enough to be categorized as high intensity. How is it? It's not as easy as you think. My feet hurt my jump because I have flat feet. I have to buy you new shoes. Those are from shin. They're not from shin. I don't feel that intense. This is the last one. I'm more used to body weight high heat training. Yeah, I don't really think jump rope is my thing. I'm done. Dennis we're just getting started. To boost the intensity without having to rely on coordination, we turn to one of the most popular YouTube hit workouts. Use your core. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And within 10 minutes, I burned 136 calories and Dennis burned 100. Almost 10 minutes since we finished the workout, both of our heart rate is still at around 100 beats per minute. I'm expecting the afterburn for this to be a bit higher than jump rope. After 20 minutes of recovery, I still only burned 24 extra calories. Meanwhile, Dennis hit 16. Oh, wow. I always thought of, like, YouTube hit workouts as kind of a joke, but that was what? That was not a joke. And you could actually do it. I think I did it. Like, even though some form. Probably not that, but the only problem, Dennis, is that my heart rate still only got to about 75% of my max. Oh, really? Yeah. We cannot get more intense than this. Yeah. Oh, God. So we turn to the true king of hiit sprints. I'm out. Some researchers claim that just one minute of all out effort can give you the same benefits as 50 minutes of normal cardio. Oh, God. That was the first one. I know. And in just 10 minutes, I burned 178 calories. That's 17.8 calories per minute, the highest so far. Sprints were also Dennis's highest calorie burner at 148 calories. However, one thing I noticed about the Data is that 97% of the calories I burned were from carbs and only 3% from fat. We'll talk more about what this means when we compare it to walking later on. Oh, I don't know. The tears of sweat. It's definitely not doable for me. I'm supposed to do legs today at the gym. I don't think I'm going to be able to. Yeah. So in terms of recovery, it's not something that I see myself doing. Like, even multiple times a week would be tough. Yeah. I would do this maybe like once a year. We'll do it on your birthday. No. Every time I saw you aging grandma, I feel easier to breathe without going lower. I do recall reading to study. Right. I'm going to look into it. You might be on to something just for the afterburn, but my heart rate finally got above 85%, which explains why after resting for 20 minutes, I burned an extra 48 calories compared to baseline, the highest afterburn we've seen so far. Same with Dennis, who burned an extra 27 calories. But don't crown sprints as a winner just yet. Most people are unaware that pretty much any exercise comes with some sort of afterburn effect. This study, for example, compared the three hour afterburn from steady state cycling to high intensity sprint intervals. The sprint training led to an afterburn of 110 calories, but the less intense cycling still led to an afterburn of 64 calories. That's a difference of just half a banana. So if you're doing HIIT just for the afterburn, you'll probably be disappointed. In fact, if afterburn is what you're after, then resistance training is a much better choice. It doesn't just have the similar afterburn as hiit, but it actually helps you maintain and build muscle as you lose weight, helping you not just get lighter, but actually look better in the process. Dennis and I are actually doing a muscle growth experiment together, and Dennis has been using the Built with Science plus app to learn the proper form of each exercise. So make sure to subscribe so you don't miss a video. But to continue our search for the best fat burning exercise, we definitely needed something more doable long term. How about jogging? I mean, every celebrity in Hollywood seems to be doing it. How does this feel? Nice, man, but I'm getting tired already. Travis, we just started. We're one minute in Mike joints. My fee. I made it, dude. Well, I caught you walking a few times though. You tried to lie. Was that true? I don't think that's. Please tell me you got on camera. Honestly, it's just like, take it at your own pace. That's one of the things I liked about jogging is that like, you were forced to go at a certain speed. I honestly don't jog very often, so like even 20 minutes of this, I could feel my hip flexors. My joints just can't really keep up. Mostly I just think it's really, really boring. Even though our jog was twice as long as our sprints workout, I was not expecting the calorie burn to almost double as well in at 350 calories for me and 260 for Dennis. But when you look at our heart rate chart, it starts to make sense. Jogging keeps the heart rate consistently elevated in the high range, whereas sprints only spikes it very briefly during intense intervals before it comes back down. But to make regular jogging burn more fat, according to this study from the British Journal of Nutrition, if you run first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, you burn 20 twice the amount of fat compared to doing the exact Same workout after eating. So the next morning we put it to the test. We burned about the same number of calories as a regular jog. But this time a bigger chunk of those calories came from fat. And multiple studies have found the same thing. When you don't eat before a workout, your body doesn't have as many carbs to use, so it turns to fat for energy instead. But here's what the big headlines don't tell you. Fat burn and fat loss are two different things. When you do fasted cardio, you don't have as much fuel on board from the food you've eaten. So what you're going to use is the available fat stores in your body. That sounds great, but then the rest of the day you're going to be relying on other sources of fuel. So it's not about what happens in the session, about the whole day. The amount of fat loss you achieve or fat mass gain you achieve is going to be dependent upon the net surplus or deficit, not what happened in those 30 minutes. That's Dr. Eric Helms, one of the top researchers in exercise science. And what he's saying is backed by long term studies which have found no long term fat loss benefit to doing cardio fasted. But for some people, fasted cardio still might be the better choice. I feel lighter to run fasted. I feel a little bit more energy. I mean, I feel pretty good. It's about doing what you'll be more likely to stick to. And in our case, our joints were taking a beating from all our jogging. And my joint feel like more shocked every time when I run on the track. But then we found these. They're banned in races. They look ridiculous, but supposedly they reduce joint impact by 80% and burn 25% more calories than regular jogging. There's only one way to find out. These look like ski boots. I don't think this is the proper way to put on. Whoa. How do you feel? Chumaroo jumero. This is great. This is awesome. I feel like you guys would love these. We're pretty fast now, so can you run faster? I don't know. I'm about to find out. I feel like there must be a technique because it feels way harder regular jogging. I can't do it. It's way too hard. Definitely a little bit easier on my knees, but it makes running like way harder. Okay, I need you to try it. I'm curious to see what the data says, but it's like a weighted freaking hip flexor exercise. I actually Prefer regular jogging. Oh, my God. It's not bad. You do feel you get a little bounce, like, push that you kind of have to balance. Maybe that's the part that you make you burn more calories. I felt like it was harder, and I was burning more calories, but I couldn't even make it. The whole 20 minutes was too hard. And they're not very comfortable, the things. Like, they're pretty hard inside. I think I have a blister. Although they definitely feel better on the knees. We ended up burning 10% fewer calories than regular jogging, which might be the weight of the boots limiting how fast we could run. However, they definitely boost your confidence, and your girlfriend might like you more. He's never been able to put his arm around my shoulder. I feel so cute. The only catch, you'll need to spend around $300 to get these special shoes. The good news is there is one exercise known as best for your joints and burns a lot of calories. All you need is water and a pool. When scientists measured how many calories elite female swimmers burn per day during training season, they clocked in at close to 6,000 calories per day on average. Which might explain how retired Olympic champion Michael Phelps ate between 8 to 10,000 calories per day and still look like this. The only problem testing it. Harry Monitor is not waterproof. Dennis, luckily has a scuba certification and assures me that this dry suit will keep this 100 waterproof. Right? Yeah. Our rate's at 150. All right. What you hear? We sweat. Oh, you went backward. Now you tell me. I'm, like, still there. While the mask and dry suit limited our ability to properly swim, even just after a few minutes, our heart rates were climbing. Unlike most exercises, swimming works nearly every major muscle group at once. More muscles working equals more calories burned. Plus, water pulls heat away from your body faster than air does, so your body has to burn extra calories just to stay warm. And after 20 minutes of walking each other like dogs, we ended up burning way more calories than I expected. 276 calories for me and 223 for Dennis. But the real surprise. As soon as the suit came off, Dennis basically turned into a mermaid. Sorry, merman. Once I reveal the calorie burn to him at the end of the video, I honestly think swimming just might become his go to exercise. Definitely. There's no impact. My joint. I feel easier to move around. But even if you can't swim, grab a floaty and you'll still burn calories or burn Even more calories by trying to save your own life. Just kidding. Don't do that, guys. Now, while you might not know how to swim, you probably know how to walk. And get this. A recent meta analysis found that for every additional thousand steps that you take per day, your risk of dying drops by about 12%. But just how good is walking when it comes to burning calories? Well, after 30 minutes at 3.2 miles per hour, we both burned almost 200 calories each. This is pretty easy. How's it on the joints? Fine. Would I rather do that compared to 10 minutes of so sprints? Definitely. That would be much easier on my joints. But the fat burn is where it gets interesting. 80% of the calories we burned were from fat, the highest so far. Jogging had only 40% fat burn, and sprints were just 3%. Now, some people say this makes walking better for fat loss, but here's what actually happens. So if you go into a high intensity interval session, because the intensity is so high, you're primarily burning carbs, you deplete glycogen, but then you see fat oxidation being higher the rest of the day because you have less carbs to use. Yeah, just like fasted cardio, what actually matters is your total calorie burn. And while walking wasn't the highest burner, it can quickly add up. One of the few studies looking at walking and fat loss had people simply add two and a half hours of extra walking per week. That's only about 20 minutes a day. That one small change, it led to an extra 3.5 pounds of fat loss over 12 weeks. But what if there was a way to easily boost the calorie burn that you get from normal walking? Incline walking was actually the preferred cardio of choice for six time Mr. Olympia champion Chris Bumstead, who would work up to a 6% incline. And after looking at the data, I can see why. Compared to flat walking at the same speed, we Both burned about 50% more calories. I would say it's like slightly more intense than regular walking, but still definitely doable. We also tested walking with a 20 pound backpack. For me, it only burned 13% more than regular walking. But for Dennis, since 20 pounds is a bigger jump for his body weight, he burned 30% more. My back is aching. You have this muscle. It's just for show, Dennis. Remember, I would much prefer incline walking, but it is weird to think about how when I was 20 pounds heavier, essentially what I was carrying around. This actually explains why most people get stuck during fat loss. In my Early Days of Fitness Every time I dieted, I lose the first five to ten pounds and then suddenly, nothing. I thought my metabolism was broken, but here's the truth. As you lose fat, it's like taking off a backpack full of the fat you've been carrying around all day, so you burn fewer calories, even if nothing else changes. So to keep fat loss moving, you'll eventually have to eat a bit less, move a bit more, and ideally lift weights to prevent muscle loss and keep your metabolism high. Now, this is a lot to figure out on your own, which is why I built an app to do all the guesswork for me. I spent years developing it with dietitians, coaches and scientists, and it tracks my progress and automatically adjusts my calories and workouts every week based on how I'm doing. It's not only helped me, but thousands of others get lean and build muscle. You can try it free for two weeks by scanning the QR code here or clicking the link below@builtwithscience.com but now it's time to face every gym bro's worst nightmare. The StairMaster. Apparently, the rock kicks off most mornings with 45 minutes on this thing. Pretend you're the Rock. Pretend? I don't need to pretend. After 20 minutes of watching our favorite shows, the machine said I burned 223 calories and Dennis 190. But similar to Apple watches, cardio machines use generic algorithms to estimate calorie burn and have been known to be off by up to 10 to 30%. Which explains why, according to the mask, I actually burned 256 calories and Dennis 215. Oh my God. I actually feel really relaxing. To be honest, I'm sweating so much, but I didn't feel like I was dying. Aside from swimming, Dennis found most of the cardio workouts boring and hard to really push himself with. But some studies suggest you naturally work harder when you're focused on skill or competition rather than just burning calories. So it's time for a different approach. Dennis did a video a while back, and it seems like he had a lot of fun. His cardio I'd have to give it a 1. So when I did 20 minutes of StairMaster, I burned 256 calories. This intense boxing workout, which was also 20 minutes, I burned 270 calories. I would say like, this felt way harder than the StairMaster. So if I had to pick personally for like something I would be consistent with, it would be StairMaster. But this was definitely fine. I'M expecting Dennis's results are pretty similar. Similar. But I'd be interested to see what he thinks. You have to increase your gas tank. Right now, your gas tank is small. That's fine. I have something bigger. But now it's time to reveal the results to Dennis and for both of us to rank them from best to worst jump rope. 10 minutes. You burn 69 calories. Nice. 69 only hit sprints. You burned 148 calories and 10 minutes. Minutes. What? Oh, my God. That's already, like, 50% more. Yeah. So one thing I noticed that was interesting about the data, the exercises where you could maintain a relatively high heart rate for a long time. Yeah. Those ones consistently burn the most calories. It was things like StairMaster. There was swimming, there was jogging. Now that you know all the data, I want you to pick your worst exercise and the best exercise. I want you to rank them not just on calorie burn. How likely are you to be consistent with it? And then how much did it impact your recovery? My best cardio exercise would be swimming, because look at the ROI. I burned 11.2 per minute. It was really enjoyable. The worst one definitely is the sprint, even though it burns the most of calorie per minute. But it's not realistic. I wouldn't be able to do this every week. Now, for me, my worst exercise for fat loss is going to have to go to the sprints. Same for me. I burned the highest calories per minute, and I like doing sprints, but it just, like, wrecked me. Honestly, it didn't burn as many calories as I expected in the 10 minutes. Now, as for my best exercise, it would have to go to regular walking. Oh. If I took my dog out to the park, would I rather do that, or would I rather do 30 minutes on the StairMaster? Not to say that if I'm crunched for time, I wouldn't use something like the StairMaster, because that was probably my close second. Yeah. But I would say, number one in terms of consistency. What I could do every day would definitely just be regular walking. Here's all the raw data, and here's how I ended up ranking them from best to worst for fat loss. And here's how Dennis ranked them. But despite all the effort Dennis has put in, ironically, the only thing slimming down might actually be his chances of losing fat. Dennis. Oh, my God. Were you filming? You just did a bunch of cardio. What did you just do? I ordered a bunch of food. I'm so hungry, I probably burned a thousand calories today, so I deserve it. Okay? That's the attitude. Nut his lunch alone already wiped out half the workouts we did in just one sitting. What a waste of time. That is why if you only focus on your cardio and you neglect your diet, you're not going to get, I know, very good results. The best combination is you do a little bit of cardio, you focus on your diet, but you also add lifting weights for your muscles and your metabolism. And luckily you had me here to help you with that. But if you didn't, I would highly recommend using the Built with Science plus app because it takes care of all the guesswork for you every single week. It'll tell you exactly what to do. Just follow it and you can try it out at built with science.com you get two weeks free or scan the QR code. But thank you so much for watching. If you want some extra help with your diet, you can always give this video a Watch next. And don't forget to subscribe and also comment below. What should Dennis and I test next? It can test anything on me. Anything.