Is HIIT the Best Way to Lose Fat? Why I Rarely Recommend It
What Is HIIT?
Why HIIT Got Hyped
Why I Don’t Recommend HIIT to Most People
Too Much HIIT Can Mess With Your System
“But I Heard HIIT Is Great for Women!”—Let’s Talk Nuance
Why Strength Training Beats HIIT for Most People
1.
The research population isn’t you
2.
It adds to your body’s total stress load
3.
Speed hides dysfunction
4.
It doesn’t train you to move better
Adapted from a DrSuz podcast episode
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has been crowned the queen of fitness for fat loss—short, sweaty, and supposedly smarter. But for most of my clients, especially those navigating fatigue, stress, menopause, or injury history, I don’t recommend it.
Not because it can’t work.
But because it usually doesn’t work well for the people who are actually doing it.
Let’s unpack the science, the hype, and the reality.
HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training.
It typically means working near your maximum effort (usually 90%+ of your heart rate max) for short bursts, followed by short recovery periods. The idea is to create an oxygen debt and force adaptation.
It can work brilliantly—but that depends on context.
Early research showed people could improve their health with just 1 minute of HIIT, three times a week. Incredible, right?
But the participants were doing nothing before.
So of course, anything looked revolutionary.
Later studies showed 10–12 minutes of HIIT could rival 30 minutes of steady cardio—but more recent data shows there’s a limit:
Spending more than ~20 minutes per week in the 90%+ heart rate zone can compromise recovery and reduce benefit.
And most people don’t hit that zone consistently—or safely.
Most HIIT studies were done on young, athletic, well-rested university students.
Not perimenopausal women with thyroid issues and three kids.
Exercise is stress. It can be good stress—but if you’re already sleep-deprived, anxious, under-fueled, or burnt out, your system may not cope well.
My mantra: Don’t move fast until you can move well slowly.
Speed amplifies poor technique. If your squat is shaky at bodyweight, adding speed and impact is a one-way ticket to a flare-up or injury.
If you’re always rushing, you’re not learning. HIIT isn’t about grooving motor patterns—it’s about surviving effort.
And that’s not how we build strong, stable, injury-resistant bodies.
This part gets missed.
When people overdo HIIT, especially women with stress, fatigue, or inflammation-prone bodies, we see symptoms that don’t look like “bad fitness”—they look like dysregulation:
Histamine-type issues (itching, congestion, headaches after workouts)
Sleep disruption (wired-but-tired, night waking, HRV crashes)
Fatigue that lasts for days, not hours
Mood dips, immune changes, and inflammatory flares
This isn’t about motivation. It’s about mismatch.
You’ve probably seen experts like Dr. Stacy Sims say:
“Don’t fear cortisol. HIIT can be great for women—especially in the follicular phase.”
And she’s right… in the lab.
In trained, well-fed, well-recovered bodies, HIIT can be a powerful tool.
But most of the people I work with:
Are navigating perimenopause or chronic fatigue
Sleep 5–6 hours a night
Feel depleted, inflamed, or anxious
Use HIIT to “earn rest” instead of regulate their system
That’s a very different hormonal landscape.
You can’t plug lab-designed HIIT into a real-life nervous system that’s already red-lining.
HIIT gives you cardiovascular load.