Does exercise 'lift' your metabolism for the day?

[Knitknitfrog]

Hello

For most of my life I have heard/read/been told that if you excersice earlly in the day, that raises your metabolism and it remains slighlty  elevated for the rest of the day. So if i was to wake up, run for an hour, then be restful the rest of the day, this advice suggests I would burn more energy than if i had a restful day and then ran for an hour in the evening. 

My question is - is it true that excersise raises your metabolism for the rest of the day?

I know my heart rate returns to resting fairly quickly after excersice, but what about my metabolism? 

This is a theoretical question only - i move as much as i can during the day, keeping active within the demands of work, family and general life. So I wouldn't really have a 'restful' day. 

Thanks

[julie_jelt]

I do know that if you strength train your metobolism keeps high the rest of the day.  I love strength training.  Do you lift?

[emili]

Yep, its called after burn. There is a lot of research that supports this theory and will break it down for you by activities that produce the highest after burn. Normally the more active you are the higher your metabolic rate is. So based on your example, if you run in the morning and burn let's say 400 calories, you can probably count on additional calories burned quicker than normal in afterburn through out the rest of the morning. This is easy to track using your fit bit. Have the exact same day twice- day 1 run, day 2 don't run. Write down how many calories you burned during your run - subtract that out from day 1 and compare the two. And by exact I mean same food and comparable activity. Let us know if you do the experiment!

[Heybales]

And if you exercised at night it would be raised for the same period of time for the same increase.

It's all a wash for what you are talking about - no specific benefit to weight loss.

Only thing is what is best for YOU - and allows you to get the intended workout.

For instance if early morning has you tired and zapped of energy - then trying to get a good strong weight lifting workout in could be utter failure.

Compared to doing it after work and having had a snack earlier.

Obviously the latter one will have more need for repair to increase metabolism for 24-48 hrs.

Then again trying to do a good jog after a long hard day of work could have you cutting it short, but the morning you could do the whole thing.

The less intense a workout is - the less the EPOC is (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption).

For instance - your jog was probably totally in aerobic zone - so there was never a lack of oxygen during the workout anyway - so nothing to make up.

But you make that jog a series of properly time interval sprints with recovery - now your body has something to recover from.

Same with weight lifting. 5 lb dumbbell curls for 20 reps isn't going to need much later.

Squating your body weight likely would.

That's why if you are limited on time, and your intent is purely calorie burn so you can eat more and still have a deficit for weight loss - then doing the workout as intense as you can that still allows you to workout good tomorrow is the biggest calorie burner.

But if you are more interested in changing the body shape and perhaps not getting to eat as much but still limited on time - strength training is the way to go. Won't burn as much during the session - but it will burn more later during recovery from a good workout.

[Heybales]

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@emili wrote:

Yep, its called after burn. There is a lot of research that supports this theory and will break it down for you by activities that produce the highest after burn. Normally the more active you are the higher your metabolic rate is. So based on your example, if you run in the morning and burn let's say 400 calories, you can probably count on additional calories burned quicker than normal in afterburn through out the rest of the morning. This is easy to track using your fit bit. Have the exact same day twice- day 1 run, day 2 don't run. Write down how many calories you burned during your run - subtract that out from day 1 and compare the two. And by exact I mean same food and comparable activity. Let us know if you do the experiment!

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While the idea is inteesting for attempting to measure EPOC-  that won't work.

As noticed - HR usually drops to normal after a workout in maybe max 1 hr. Usually much shorter.

So HR would be no indicator, so Fitbit HR devices would have no clue on higher metabolism.

Step-based devices assign sleeping BMR calorie burn to all non-moving time. In that case being tired after your workout would actually show less calories burned.

Nope - the only way to know if your getting it is a CO2/O2 gas mask analysis, and wearing one in this example.

Because all that is happening is your body is getting more O2 out of the air breathed than normally would occur. Same HR, same breathing rate - merely extracting more for each breath and transporting it for each heart beat.

Also, easier to see the effect of exercise

You can create an Activity Record manually for any chunk of time - exercise or not.

So as you suggest - one day with exercise, one day without.

See what the net effect is on that chunk of time, and how that would apply to the day.

Sadly many people will do a hard workout, then be less active because of recovering from it - causing the day to be not much higher calorie burn - sometimes even less than if they'd been active doing something else like cleaning out the garage.

[emili]

Right. That's what I meant 😉

[divedragon]

There are different ways to account for "increased metabolism".  It's not really about heart rate or respiration rate, but the rather the energy your body consumes over a given time.  Muscle burns more than fat, so the more muscle you have, the higher your metobolic rate even if your heart and respiration are low.  Weight lifting/resistance exericse work because you literally break down the mucle, creating microscopic tears.  You also deplete glucose stores in the the muscles, so the body works to both repair the damage and replinish the energy.  It also rebuilds the damage to make it stronger in an attempt to prevent future damage, which then takes more energy to maintain and thus provides an increase in your metabolic rate.  These things will happen regardless of the time of day you do them.

Steady state cardio tends to burn fat while you are engaged in the activity and very little after burn or EPOC, but if you get the intensity high enough to put yourself into an anerobic state, you can increase the afterburn in replacing the energy stores you used up.  Bring in High Intensity Interval training.  This can so deplete the muscles (much in the same way weight lifting does) and drive the body into an anerobic state as well as stimulate the release of fatty acids from your fat cells.  The problem is, HIIT is typically pretty short in duration so while you can release a lot of fat, you won't necessarily burn it all up.

What is holding the most promise now is to combine HIIT with some type of steady state exercise.  You can do HIIT in the form of sprinting or biking, then hit the weights for 30-60 minutes or go into a steady state jog or bike.  This is believed to kick start the fat burning process so that the steady state then burns more fat up during the cardio state.  You also further deplete your body of energy that will need to be replaced by burning more fat when the exercise period is over.  Following this same logic, if you do your run in the morning and then continue to be active throughout the day, you may be able to continue to an increased fat burn throughout the day or for at least a few hours.  Stopping activity and just resting will probably not get you much.

So the bottom line is that the more intense you make your morning workouts, adding resistance training to your routine and continuing to remain as active as you can will result in an increase in metabolism that will grow over time.

[josephz2va]

According to WebMD, the more muscular mass you have and more exercise you have done, the higher your metabolism is. For me, I would have a very low metabolism rate with a body fat percentage of 28% and I'm 61 pounds over weight. If I was at my correct weight (BMI of 19-23) and a very low fat percentage (8%-14%), I'd have a much higher metabolic rate and a healthier heart rate in bed (athletic is 40 to 60 bpm sleeping).

I mostly can achieve that if I can avoid eating extra foods for one to drop the 61 pounds over weight. Secondly, spend up to 99 minutes on elliptical HR Interval Training at 3:00 am (default on the machine is 130 and 147 HR 2 minute increments) and home personal training on Fitstar (Get Lean 30 minutes or Daily Conditioning 15 minutes) every single day 7 days straight.

[Sofi23]

Weight training and building muscle will improve your BMR, this will also give you a longer period of afterburn compared to cardio. Although the amount of either you do will effect how true that statement is (cross country running vs 15 minutes of weights for example, the runner will have a longer afterburn). Generally a good rule though.