"Eat less". Good idea. Wish I'd thought of that.
Harder than skipping the cookie, sure, but also better for you. For example, look at the thighs of a chronic eater/exerciser and a chronic dieter.
I'm in pretty good shape and did a real 1000 calories workout one time with a trainer friend of mine (he has a body bug which does an okay job of tracking calories). It took an hour of high intensity exercise and I nearly puked a few times during the workout. That's how hard it was.
[1]http://www.fitsugar.com/Ten-Ways-Burn-200-Calories-1081158
Your own link suggests 12 minutes of vigorous biking will burn 200 cals as well as 10 minutes of boxing.
You hit on the rest of the equation though, specifically about what people think is high intensity. Vigorous biking means going all out for 12 full minutes likely with the resistance turned up pretty high. When it comes to elliptical machines they are notoriously bad at making people think they do all this 'work' when in reality it's momentum unless they turn the machines resistance way up. Treadmills do some of this by 'carrying' people along, but they are not nearly as bad as ellipticals.
Boxing is very good, but really doing boxing for 10 minutes with a heavy bag is not easy. Notice how long the rounds are in a real boxing match and how tired the fighters are. Reminds me of the only other time I've puked while exercising was doing 2 minute on/1 minute off BJJ rounds.
You should actually swap your warmup method around [3]. If you can do a minute full intensity with only 30 seconds rest then that would lead me to believe the intensity isn't as high as you think. Instead do 30 seconds full intensity with 90 seconds rest[1]. Personally, I have to do this on a track b/c it scares me to even try to run at a true full speed on a treadmill (I had a 5.0sec 40yd at one point in my life hah!). 60 second splits with 180 second rest is also popular. I can't find it now [2], but the original HIIT research found the 1:3 sprint:non-sprint ratio as a key factor.
[1]http://www.intervaltraining.net/HiitTraining-30.html
[2]Darn all the 'fitness' crap on the internet because it makes it near impossible to find anything a second time
[3]To clarify - I would actually do a different warmup more focused on the up coming workout and do true HIIT post workout or on it's own day.
As for my interval times, it corresponds to 1 minute rounds, 30 seconds rest. I could jack up the intensity more if I wanted to do 30/90, but in the ring that would correspond to 30 seconds dishing it out, 30 seconds getting killed.
By the way, could you explain the rationale behind [3]?
The rational with 3 is simple. Some of the recent writings from people like Alywn Cosgrove and Lou Shuler (2 guys who I think know what they are talking about) have talked about how useless the standard treadmill warmup is for people. Instead they advocate people focus on dynamic stretching and a focused warmup prior to weight lifting. So if I'm benching that day my warmup might consist of shoulder mobility stretching/pre-hab and progressively heavier bench weight until I'm ready to do my work sets. Running on the treadmill would have done nothing to prepare my chest and in particular my shoulders for what was about to happen.
If you love running on the treadmill before working out then go for it, but make sure to also warmup whatever you're working on that day from a weight standpoint. Also, since most people are time constrained that 10 minutes on the treadmill before doing anything else could be better used.
When it comes to doing full HIIT, I simply don't have the energy to do it properly and then lift or vice versa. For example, when I dead lifted this week I did 365x5, 405x5, 455x2, 510x1 after my active warm up. I followed that with SLDLs, pull throughs and then some plyo work (high jumps, long jumps, etc...). There is no way I could do any sort of HIIT with the proper intensity after that considering I had a hard time walking :)
On days when there is less lower body work I can sometimes squeeze HIIT in at the end of the workout depending on how spent I am. Generally I'll just mix in 1/6 mile sprints in between various upper body sets.
My main cardio comes from doing various other activities like hiking, snowboarding, basketball, etc...
Check it out sometime.
By the way... I see people all too often misunderstand "cheat days". On a cheat day, you don't get to pig out on junk food. You get to pig out on good, healthy food (i.e., double-up on serving sizes), or have just a serving of less-than healthy food (such as pizza, etc).