Calories in = Calories Out - Not Necessarily

It's a popular belief that with exercise, calories in = calories out, so it's just a matter of burning enough calories to lose weight.  On the surface, this makes sense.  However, over the past month, I've been jogging about 4 hours a week on average, and the stubborn last bit of weight I was trying to skim off stuck around, and I even gained a couple pounds! 

My finding from negative results when jogging so much is that different intensities of exercise have different metabolic effects.  It's probably not a matter of how many calories someone burns off and consumes in a day, but how the body is activated to process the calories.  With jogging, my body wasn't being pushed enough, and probably went into 'storage mode.'  This is why I've stopped jogging and have decided to do a combination of boxing in place on a mat and intervals of jumping jacks for 30 minutes.  The boxing/jumping jacks is more intense, and the first time I did this, I was so sore I had to wait 3 days to heal before repeating!  My shirt was also wet with sweat.  When jogging, it took nearly an hour to get any sweat on my shirt, compared to 30 minutes with boxing/jumping jacks.

There are those who say that sprinting for short intervals, resting for less than a minute, then repeating a few times is superior to what's known as 'steady state' (jogging).  There is the more popular HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), and there is LISS (Low Intensity Steady State) among exercisers and athletes.  I tried HIIT in the past, but fans of this always say to push your body as hard as you can, which could be unhealthy.  The last time I did HIIT, I would get heart palpitations, which is no fun at all!  This may have been because I was combining LISS with HIIT to try to get the benefits of both, which was probably pushing my body too hard.  My finding is that LISS isn't enough, and HIIT is too much.  The boxing/jumping jacks is definitely more intense than LISS, but doesn't make me feel like I'm about to 'kill over,' as is often the case with HIIT.  I feel invigorated with the boxing/jumping jacks, and it's a whole-body workout, giving both my upper and lower body some very high quality action.

It will be interesting to see what happens with my new form of exercise.  I'm only wanting to lose another 10 pounds to get rid of that 'dad bod' thing I've got going.  It's not a super big deal, but I wasn't feeling very good with the jogging anyway, being tired all the time and having a very annoying tingling in my feet/lower legs in the morning, which is a sign of high blood sugar.  I was amazed that I would still have this issue when jogging so much.  

I'm happy to try something new!