Increase Calorie Expenditure and Stop Exercising!?

Okay well not exactly, let me explain. After you finish an exercise session there is a period of time where your body is restoring itself back to it's pre-exercise state. This process is referred to as EPOC (excess postexercise oxygen consumption) or more commonly known as afterburn.  During this time the body continues to require oxygen at a higher rate than before the exercise began, also causing energy to be expended at an elevated rate. Basically, you are still burning calories even though you have stopped exercising. In the graph below you can see the oxygen needs of the body through a exercise session. The green shaded area is the EPOC period. Let's say for example this specific graph shows the oxygen needs for jogging at 5mph on a treadmill for 30 minutes. If you increased the intensity of the workout to running 7mph for 20 minutes the oxygen requirement would be greater causing the EPOC phase to be even greater and increasing the calories expended during that time.  

The research suggests that a higher-intensity intermittent type training program has a greater effect on increasing the EPOC phase. It also appears that resistance training produces greater EPOC than aerobic. So if you are feeling like have hit a plateau and not losing any weight even though you are doing a lot of cardio, try changing it up. Your body has probably made adjustments to your training regimen and needs to be overloaded again. Increase your intensity, and do a combined resistance and cardio training circuit. Here is an example work out for you to try:

Do this 6 minute circuit 3 times:

1 minute alternating lunges
30 seconds push ups
repeat
30 seconds of jumping jacks
30 seconds of high knees
repeat
1 minute crunches


References:
Resistance training and Epoc. Jeff M. Reynolds and Len Kravitz. Ph.D.