Your body burns extra fat after hard exercise. It’s called excess post-exercise consumption – or EPOC. EPOC happens as you burn fat to refuel tired muscles and replace oxygen in red blood cells.
You need to exercise at moderate or high intensity to get the effect. This means hitting at least 7 out of 10 on how hard the session feels. If you’ve got a heart rate monitor – aim for 65-80% of your maximum heart rate.
The longer you exercise – the longer your after burn. In an experiment – people who cycled at high intensity for 80 minutes – got 10.5 hours worth of after burn.