It’s long been believed by fitness professionals that once you complete a high-intensity workout, your body’s metabolism revs up and keeps burning calories at a higher-than-usual rate for the next 24 hours. This not only helps people lose weight, but it also provides them with motivation to work out regularly.
Sadly, however, new research shows that the after-exercise burn may be more fiction than fact. The study’s authors report that while people do burn more fat when they are exercising than when they are not, they have no greater ability to burn fat over the next 24 hours than on days when they are sedentary. Darn.