Which burns more calories: Interval or Endurance Training?

1. Calorie-burning isn't really the point of exercise. 
2. If you really want to lose weight, the most efficient thing is to reduce the amount that you eat. 
3. But there's a lot of misinformation when it comes to calories and interval training. 
4. What do you think burns more calories? Is it a woman who cycles at a steady-state pace for 50 minutes? Or the same woman conducting a 10 by 1 sprint workout, which sees her blasting through 10 repeats of one-minute cycling intervals?
5. The answer actually depends on the length of time you're measuring. Those who exercise at moderate-intensity for long periods of time will tend to burn more calories during the period they're actually exercising as compared to those conducting an interval workout. 
6. For example, a 60Kg woman who cycles for 50 minutes at a moderate pace might burn about 550 calories. Meanwhile, that same 60Kg woman who does the 10 by 1 interval workout on a bike might burn just 350 calories. The long bout of endurance exercise burns almost as twice as many calories as expended during the interval exercise. 
7. But things change once the workout's over because of something personal trainers like to call the after-burn. Exercise elevates metabolism or the rate at which the body uses oxygen to burn fuels for energy. The more intense the exercise, the greater the effect on metabolism and the longer it takes the body to return to its normal resting state. That period of elevated metabolism during recovery is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. (Many people refer to it as the after-burn.)
8.  The major point you have to remember is that the more intense the exercise, the greater the number of calories expended during the after-burn. 
9. When after-brun is accounted for in the course of a 24-hour period, the two groups (50 minutes vs 10x1 bouts explained above) burned similar amounts of calories regardless of which type of workout they conducted. 
10. The effect of the intense exercise after-burn was such that regardless of whether you engaged in continuous or interval based training, you ended up burning the same amount of calories over the 24-hour period in which you conducted the exercise. 
11. So while interval training may not burn as many calories during the workout, the afterburn effect is such that the two types of workouts burn similar amounts of calories through the course of the day.