It’s Tough, But Burns Fat 4x Faster Than 10K Steps/Day

0:00 Walking 10,000 steps a day is one of the simplest ways to lose fat. But there is one problem with it, time. So today we're using the world's most accurate calorie tracker to test 11 different exercises to see if there's a way to easily burn the same amount of calories in a fraction of the time. But first let's find out how many calories each of us burns from walking 10,000 steps. Now we're using three of us to test every exercise because different body types and fitness levels may not all respond the same way.

0:27 >> I got small legs. They got to work hard. >> Now normally you wouldn't just go do 10,000 steps all at once like we did, but this does help give us a baseline. I'm just 30 minutes in and we're not even halfway to the 10k target. >> This is taking longer than I expected. The good news is that it's kind of fun. >> I even managed to make some friends along the way. >> Do you do this every day?

0:47 >> Yes, every day. >> Mm. >> 6,750. >> And how old are you? >> 91. >> 91. >> Yeah. >> 8,300 now. 1 hour and 10 minutes in. My hips are kind of getting tight and sickle walking. >> And after over an hour and a half of walking, we finally made it. As for calorie burn, I burned a grand total of 418 calories, which is honestly pretty good considering how easy it was. Melody, who has a similar weight as me, burned a pretty similar 438 calories. Meanwhile Dennis, who weighs about 30 lbs less than both of us, burned just 342 calories. And so based on our data, it seems like if you take your body weight in pounds and multiply it by 2.7, that should give you a pretty good estimate of how many calories you'd burn from walking 10,000 steps. Every exercise we do after this will rank based on how many minutes it would take to match the same calorie burn as 10,000 steps. With the next exercise involving even more walking, but with a twist. It's called the Japanese walking method, protocol invented by Japanese researchers where you do 3 minutes of slow walking followed by 3 minutes of fast walking.

1:56 And you do that for a total total 30 minutes. >> Let's do fast >> in verse, 3 minutes. >> This interval walking workout recently gained popularity because of the pretty crazy results from this study. And I'm curious if it can burn more than 10,000 steps and despite taking a third of the time. And if you're wondering what the Bane mask is we're all wearing, this measures the oxygen and carbon dioxide from every breath and uses that to determine the exact calorie burn from every exercise with way more accuracy than a simple Apple Watch.

2:25 >> Okay, it's slow. All right, we are almost two thirds of the way in. So far, what I'm noticing, I can't get my heart rate high enough. >> In order for this protocol to work, during the fast walking, you're supposed to get your heart rate up to 70% of your max, which for me is about 130 beats per minute. >> This is fast as I can walk and the heart rate's at 113. Come on. >> Now normally I don't have problems getting it up, but even with aggressive arm jerking, it just couldn't get that high.

2:53 >> Keep going. I'm at 113. March speed. 118, 119. >> And even when it did, it would instantly drop as soon as the fast interval ended. >> It is slow. >> After 30 minutes, I burned just 144 calories, whereas Dennis burned just 114 calories. And so to burn the same amount of calories as 10,000 steps, it would still take us roughly 90 minutes of interval walking, providing no real time advantage. But Melody was different. She actually managed to get her heart rate quite high and it stayed relatively high even during the slower intervals, suggesting the interval walking was actually quite challenging for her with a total of 249 calories in just 30 minutes. And so at that rate, she'd match 10,000 steps in just 53 minutes instead of 91, a legitimate time saver.

3:44 >> Doing my best. >> And for Melody, this is especially promising. >> I want to start a family soon and prepare my mind, body, and habits the best way possible. >> So ideally we find something where if you've been at work all day and you haven't taken that many steps that maybe there's a solution that doesn't take as much time. >> Yeah. I'm open to it. >> For the next exercise, you can actually do it in the comfort of your own home.

4:09 And all you need is this. Ow. That is fast. It may look funny, but this exercise has apparently helped tons of people lose weight online. So this is what grandma's doing in China? >> My grandma do this all the time, every day. >> Basically, this exercise gets you jogging without really feeling like you're jogging. There's just three rules. First, take one light step with every beat. Second, stay on your toes and avoid landing on your heels.

4:42 And third, stay relaxed and upright. Not long after, my living room had basically turned into a fat loss nightclub. But whether this is actually any good for burning calories, we'll find out soon. But the interesting thing is because we're all following the same beat, nobody can really slack off or accidentally speed up. And somehow, despite none of us being out of breath, all of our heart rates climbed almost 10 beats per minute faster than regular walking.

5:07 My feet are kind of sore. >> My >> We only We only did 10 minutes. I can't imagine doing 30 minutes of that. >> I think my calves are like really sore. >> Yeah, look at Dennis's calves. >> If this is good, I'm going to be doing this around the house. >> we'll see. So after 10 minutes at the disco, here is how many calories each of us burned. And here is how long each of us would have to do it to get the same calorie burn as 10,000 steps. So while there was a slight benefit from Melody, generally it was almost a one-for-one swap with regular walking, which I'd say is actually great news. With every 10 minutes equating to roughly 1,000 steps, it makes for a great alternative to walking if you're stuck inside or simply want to get some extra calorie burn while watching TV. Walking keeps things easy, but what happens when you start using some of the largest muscles in your body? Air squats. Because we found the metronome pretty helpful from the last exercise, we're using it again, but at a slower pace of 30 beats per minute, which means we're doing 30 squats per minute. Lower, lower. Ow.

6:04 Lower. >> Not even one minute in and Dennis has started to complain. Now Dennis says he doesn't skip his leg days, but from what I've seen, there's a reason he can't even handle body weight squats. Now how much an exercise burns depends on how much muscle you're using and how hard those muscles are working. It's why squats should have a huge advantage over walking. That is if you're doing them correctly.

6:34 >> Bad form example here. Excellent demo of bad form, Dennis. Good job. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> >> Don't do it on the rug. >> And the good news is even just 3 minutes of squats gives you some pretty crazy benefits. Aside from the calorie burn, a recent study found that in people who sit all day, doing just 10 squats every 45 minutes out performed going for one longer 30-minute walk, specifically for controlling your blood sugar after meals, which might be because your leg muscles almost act like sponges, soaking up the sugar from your blood and using it for energy. As for calorie burn, I was burning calories almost twice as fast as regular walking, totaling 81 calories after 10 minutes.

7:18 Melody was close behind with 78, whereas Dennis 29 calories. Despite all that suffering, he actually burned calories slower than regular walking. Although honestly, I'm surprised the mask gave him any calories for whatever those reps were. But even though this put squats at the top of the leaderboard for Melody and I, I don't think any of us would do any more than 3 minutes of squats at a time. What if I told you you could burn calories without even moving? Check it out.

7:47 This is a vibration machine. It's supposed to vibrate all your muscles and this is actually pretty common in Asian households. Apparently, grandmas all over Asia think that it's going to be one of the best ways to burn off fat, so we're going to find out. We got this vibration plate off Amazon for 100 bucks. We cranked it to the highest setting to give it its best possible shot. I feel like it made me want to pee for some reason.

8:18 Woah. Now, when Dennis first pitched including this exercise in the video, I said no. I was pretty confident the only thing it's going to be burning is our money. >> If this works, I'm buying one. >> But there is some research behind them. In one study, 35 women with obesity trained on a vibration plate for 14 minutes twice a week for 10 weeks. And they did end up with stronger legs, less body fat, and more belly fat reduction compared to 15 women who just didn't exercise. However, after some digging, I found out the study was funded by the company that actually makes the vibration plate they tested. And given that the control group wasn't doing any exercise, it's hard to tell if the vibration plate actually did anything.

9:01 I'm actually more relaxed now than I was when I started. I think it would take a miracle for that to be effective. But we'll see. We'll see. I have an open mind. As for calorie burn, in 10 minutes I burned 28 calories. Dennis burned 22 and Melody burned 33, which is only a few calories more than we would have burned by simply standing, which means you'd have to stand on it pretty much all day for it to really do anything, let alone equate to walking 10,000 steps. But here's something that might actually be more promising. It's called rebounding. And unlike your high school rebounds, this has become super popular worldwide with gyms even offering dedicated classes. You basically bounce and dance along to the music on a mini trampoline. What's the worst that could happen, right?

9:47 And I'll see it claims online that it burns 500 to 800 calories an hour, about as much as running. We'll see about that, but it definitely was testing our coordination skills while also managing to bring out the inner kid in each of us. >> So fun. When you start jumping, you just want to keep jumping and you might even do a flip. Bring back your inner child. >> Did this make you happier? >> Yeah. >> As as calorie burn, after 10 minutes of fun, I burned 62 calories. Dennis burned 41 and Melody burned 66. And while that's well under what's claimed online, it did manage to beat regular walking for all three of us, putting it in the lead for Dennis, while squats stayed in the lead for me and Melody. Now we are going to test some tougher exercises later on. You okay?

10:33 But before that, I want to test a form of walking that has recently blown up. >> It's the original fitness activity. >> Helps them preferentially burn fat. >> It's going to be hard, but I'm going to do it. >> You can do it with your grandkids. You can do it with your grandma. >> I got a dog. I got to walk the dog. Instead, I ruck the dog. >> It's called a rucking. Basically, you walk with a weighted vest or a loaded backpack. Born from the military to help soldiers build stamina, it's recently blown up as a fat loss trend people swear by. To test it, we're going for a 20-minute walk wearing a 20-lb weighted vest.

11:02 >> Pretty heavy, but let's go for a walk. >> More walking with Melody. >> It's very hard to walk around, honestly. >> Feels good. Not hard. I love walking. >> Oh, blackberries. >> This area is getting sore already. >> Now despite feeling quite a bit harder than regular walking, for all three of us, it was only speeding up calorie burn by about 20 to 30%. Now if you wore that for a whole 10,000 steps, that could burn an extra 100 calories or so. So it's not nothing. But after the full 20 minutes, I burned 108 calories, 91 for Dennis, and 128 for Melody, which does make a score pretty decently on the leaderboard, but I'm pretty confident this next exercise will crush it.

11:40 Incline walking. Specifically, a 3 mph at a 9% incline for 20 minutes. And because I know Dennis's body loves to find creative ways to cheat, I gave each of us a rule of no hands on the machine. Because if you do that and you lean back, you pretty much cancel out the incline. And that's important because based on the best available prediction equations out there, every 1% increase in incline should speed up calorie burn by roughly 10 to 15%. And so if that's true, even just a 2% incline would already match the effectiveness of wearing a 20 lb weighted vest. And so far, it seems like it was working because Dennis and I were burning calories almost twice as fast as regular walking. And Melody, almost three times faster.

12:24 As for why, remember how the calorie burn of an exercise depends on how many muscles are being worked and how hard? Well, the incline forces your big lower body muscles like your quads and glutes to work harder. And the higher the incline, the harder these muscles work, which might explain why fitness level aside, Melody, who carries most of her muscle in her lower body, was burning calories the fastest. In fact, this is part of the reason why simply just having more muscle can make getting and staying lean a whole lot easier. It's why with Melody and everyone at Coach, we don't just focus on cardio. We combine it with hard weight training and a proper diet. One without the other just doesn't give you the same effect. And if you want a personalized and done for you plan that adjusts based on how your body is actually responding to the plan, then after this video, you can try two weeks free of our Built with Science app over at builtwithscience.com or by scanning this QR code right here. Plus, for a limited time, our early Black Friday sale is currently live, so you're also going to get 30% off.

13:23 >> It's a lot of effort and for short legs, I feel like it's just you really have to push yourself. >> Which one did you pick so far? >> Walking. >> Now, hopefully Melody's opinion changes at the end of the video when I reveal the actual data because after 20 minutes, I burned 166 calories, Dennis burned 124, and Melody a whopping 252, the highest so far, which puts incline walking as the best exercise for all three of us. But then we tested cycling.

13:53 Now, we did do this indoors, but the data should be similar to outdoors because unlike the incline walking, I didn't set a specific resistance or speed. I simply told everyone to work at a comfortable pace. But because I prefer doing everything hard and fast, I pushed myself a little bit harder than the others, which might explain why this is the only exercise so far where I've managed to burn more calories than Melody. After 20 minutes, I burned 130 calories compared to Melody burning 119 and Dennis burning 88. So while still gave each of us a slight edge over normal walking, with self-paced exercises, the benefit really just depends on how hard you're willing to work, which based on Dennis's track record so far, I already know is going to make this next exercise a big problem. Burpees.

14:39 Are we doing 100 of them? No. 3 2 1 go. We're setting the timer at to 10 minutes and early on, everyone, including Dennis, was actually doing pretty good. At this pace, I was confident we'd all successfully hit 100 by the end of the 10 minutes. But after just 10 burpees, Dennis's true form began to show. His push-ups slowly became half reps and his jumps slowly became well, I don't really know how to describe these.

15:10 Meanwhile, Melody was crushing it and already surpassed 50 burpees. And aside from Dennis, our heart rates were the highest it's been from all the exercises we've tested so far. And this high intensity should create what's known as the afterburn effect. Where your body continues to burn additional calories after the workout is over while your body is still recovering. Although I'm not sure how much Dennis will have to show for it. >> Every single exercise he throws impresses me because he finds new ways of never seeing fatigue. Look at his jump.

15:48 >> That was a total of 10 minutes. The goal was 100 burpees. Melody got 85. I managed to hit 100 and Dennis, how much did you get? >> I did 73. >> 73, you guys comment below how many you think he actually did. How many of those burpees counted? >> 70. >> Depending on the calorie burn, if you told me 10 minutes of burpees got me 10,000 steps, 100% I would do the I would do 10 minutes of burpees. No?

16:12 For for 90 minutes of walking, we would do 10 burpees 10 minutes of burpees. Really? >> walking, yeah. >> Wow. In minutes, I burned 128 calories, while Melody burned a total of 95 calories, and Dennis managed to still burn 45 calories. >> Wait, all just for the half of the rice crispies? >> But remember, after the workout, we also measured the afterburn by keeping our masks on for about 10 to 20 minutes until our heart rates recovered back to baseline, which gave each of us a very slight 10% boost in the total calorie burn. Officially moving burpees to the fastest burner for myself, a close second for Melody, and nothing special for Dennis.

16:53 But unlike burpees where it's easy to slow down when you're tired, this next machine forces you to keep up, the StairMaster. Now this bad boy checks a lot of boxes for calorie burn. First, every step forces you to lift your body weight using some of the biggest muscles in your body. And second, you have to set a pace, which in our case was speed seven, which helps hold you accountable. At least that's what I thought because I set up my camera in the garage to record Melody and Dennis doing their 20 minute sessions while I went inside to look at the data.

17:24 Bad idea. Once again, Dennis somehow figured out how to cheat. Every minute leaning more and more of his body weight onto the machine to make things easier on his legs. Now at this point, I'm genuinely impressed with his creativity. Meanwhile, Melody was crushing it. Holy crap, you are actually like working hard right now. >> Oh, I feel my heart pumping. >> Her heart rate even climbed to 175, higher than it got during burpees. Now since I'm used to doing StairMaster after most of my workouts, my heart rate didn't climb as high as Melody's, but it definitely still gave me a solid workout. It's actually one of my favorite ways to do cardio. Once your legs get used to it, like it gets a lot easier. Thumbs up, thumbs down, neutral.

18:07 >> You still think it's good? >> Good? Okay. >> Good push. >> We'll see how Dennis likes this. >> The resistance resistance is high. But it is I'm not like dying all breath. >> Was all that effort worth it? After 20 minutes, I burned 224 calories, Melody a whopping 300 and Dennis 136 calories, plus a little bit extra from the afterburn, especially for Melody. Which means even with Dennis practically napping on the machine, the stair master takes the top spot for both him and Melody and right behind burpees for me, which brings us to our final exercise and Dennis's last chance to prove to me he can do a workout without finding a way to cheat.

18:48 >> 3 2 1 go. >> Sprints. For 10 minutes, we did rounds of all out sprints followed by short walks to recover and even though this forced us to push our bodies harder than any exercise we've done so far, Dennis held strong and actually surprised me with his speed. I could tell he was giving it his all. I felt like a proud father watching my son finally reach the potential I knew he was capable of. But even though we were all pushing hard, most of a sprint session is actually spent recovering, which might explain why the calorie burn after 10 minutes, including the afterburn, was just 95 for me, 61 for Dennis, and 96 for Melody, which puts it right here on the leaderboard.

19:41 And so after 3 days, 11 different exercises, and a whole lot of moaning, it's time to bring Dennis and Melody back together and reveal what I think is the best exercise for each of us. And so even though we used the mask to try to figure out what is the fastest way to replace 10,000 steps, I just don't want people to take this literally and just not do any walking cuz I think it shows how like even plain old walking, it does burn calories and it's very easy to do, right? So I would still recommend each of us incorporate movement, walk throughout the day, but these exercises are ways that you can speed it up and just ramp up the calorie burn. Dennis, let's start with you. The best exercise for you is going to be your second highest calorie burner, which was incline walking.

20:24 >> Oh. >> You didn't cheat, and it seemed like mean, I didn't hear you complain once. For me, I would pick >> Stair Master. >> Stair Master. I mean, there's a reason why I have one in the garage. Now, Melody. >> Melody. >> Tum tum tum. >> tum tum. What is it? >> And it was Stair Master. >> Stair Master? I was dying on Stair Master. You remember my heart rate? >> You were dying. You were pushing hard.

20:47 Which one do you think >> Oh, which one would I do? >> Yeah. >> I prefer incline walk. >> Cuz I'm going to order you >> Oh. >> I'm going to order you a treadmill for your house so you could do incline walking in the comfort of your home. >> What? >> Would that be helpful? >> Oh my gosh. Yeah? >> Yeah? >> Wow. Thank you. >> so you could incline walk when you have your baby. Its first steps has to be on the incline treadmill.

21:13 >> Okay, it's treadmill time. >> Yes. Well, at least you'll try. You? >> Sure. >> Let's go. >> Incline walk all your way. >> What what do I get? >> You you will get a one-on-one session with me where I'm going to teach you proper squats. >> Oh god. That's I don't want that. >> Give me a hug. Congratulations. But whether it's incline walking, jogging around your living room, or plain old walking, the best exercise is rarely the one that burns the most, but the one you can actually stick to. And to help guide your decision, here is all the data we've collected.

21:42 And if you're looking for some more guidance and a more personalized plan, you can try two weeks free of our Built with Science Plus app by scanning this QR code or heading to builtwithscience.com. Subscribe to stay updated with Melody's journey, and I'll see you next time.