[ELI5] How Does The Body Still Burn Calories Up to 24 Hours After a HIIT Workout

Question

[ELI5] How Does The Body Still Burn Calories Up to 24 Hours After a HIIT Workout

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Answer 1

The simplest I can say is:

Going from exercise to rest isn’t like flipping a switch. It’s more like shutting down a factory, it takes a lot of steps that happen subconsciously and all those steps “drain power”.

Processes removing lactic acid, restoring oxygen levels to normal and healing muscle damage all take caloric energy to do.

I think the afterburn is something along the lines of 5-10% of your total burn. And it’s not limited to HIIT workouts either, you theoretically get this effect from any type of workout, just different degrees of calory burn depending on the type of exercise.

Hope this helped.