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I'm living in a hostel right now and they give us a lot to eat, so I'm afraid that in a couple of months I may get a little obese. Because of that I wanted to know if you can give me a set of exercises or a routine I can watch on YouTube to do exercise everyday for 10 or 15 minutes aimed to burn fat, so I don't become so obese.

Thank you.

OiciTrap
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    https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/19114/aerobic-vs-anaerobic-for-better-fat-loss/19117#19117 – Eric Oct 09 '18 at 15:49

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The question of calorie deficit / calorie surplus is always in the "calorie intake" part of the equation, not "calorie spend" part. In other words, it is mostly about what we eat, and not about how we spend these calories.

The metabolism of simply keeping your body alive on the couch for a day is hard to match with extensive exercise. For example, one can easily consume twice the amount of necessary food, but it'd be pretty hard to burn twice the amount of calories.

15 min of even brutal HIIT (high intensity interval training) won't be enough to compensate for a fun-size chocolate bar.

Consider the study where hunter-gatherers in Tanzania were burning a relatively similar amount of calories to some typical Westerners (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040503#s1)

Summary:

  • 10-15 min of exercise a day won't save you if you're overeating.
  • even 1 hour of daily exercise won't save you if you overeat. I exercise 1hr a day and I'm gaining weight (albeit gaining muscle mass and overeating by design, but you get the idea)
  • focus on "calorie intake" part of the equation. They don't force-feed you, do they? It's all about self-control and discipline.
  • a nice nip in the bud is to sleep well and manage your stress level: these are catalysts to gaining weight.
Taraas
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  • If your diet is nearly balanced to begin with, you can certainly use "calorie spend" to lose weight or avoid gaining. For example, 50 surplus calories a day works out to a weight gain of 2.5kg per year, but it's well within the range of what you can burn off in a reasonable exercise session. – Mark Oct 19 '18 at 02:39
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If you are restricted to 10-15 minutes a day, it might be hard to compensate for a huge calory surplus. You should ask for smaller portions or (while I don't want to encourage food waste) just refuse to eat up your meal if they deny to give you a suitable portion.

Having said that, you can certainly increase your calory consumption with exercises. 10-15 minutes is not much, but neither nothing. Being restricted to 10-15 minutes you might get the best price-performance ratio with HIIT, imho. HIIT has been shown to have more impact on body recomposition, health and fitness than steady state exercise (see here for example, if you are a student you might also be able to access this meta-analysis or this study). Here is a short summary of the findings.

Some examples of exercises you can perform

  • Burpees (or sprawls if you're having issues with the push-up part)
  • Air-squats
  • Jumps
  • Mountain climbers
  • etc.

If you have access to a home trainer that would be an option, too.

Paul K
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