The Best Exercises For Fat Loss
Losing weight and fat loss really boils down to one thing: Eat less, move more. Losing weight is all about creating an energy (calorie) deficit. When you take in less fuel than you burn, your body has to pull fuel from somewhere else — and that somewhere else is your fat stores.
There are more effective exercises you can do when your goal is fat loss. Fat-loss workouts are all about speeding up your metabolism and keeping your body guessing.
If you’re been trying hard to lose weight and you're at a pleateau or it's not going as fast as you want, you may be tempted to run more miles on the treadmill. Or doing double-sessions of spinning classes. Or going on the dangerous keto diet to speed things up. Don't do ANY of that. It's simpler and more enjoyable than those (ineffective) strategies! You will end up a really hungry and miserable jogger LOL!
Research shows that a proper diet has the edge over exercise when it comes to weight loss. But — shocker — people who combine diet and exercise lose even more weight, faster.
Here's what you REALLY want to know: NOT ALL EXERCISE IS CREATED EQUAL. It took me until I was in my late 30's to figure this out because I used to be a cardio queen/runner who believed more cardio = more fat loss. And the longer you exercised the more inches you lost in sweat. Definitely not true.
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, it takes about 150 minutes a week of moderately intense exercise to lose weight. And exercising more than that can shift your fat loss into overdrive — as long as you follow a few simple guidelines.
Focus on Boosting Your Metabolism
How many calories you burn during your workout is important when it comes to losing weight, but how many calories you burn during the other 23 hours of your day is even more so. In short, raising your metabolism is the key to shedding fat.
Now don't tell me you are one of those people who "has a slow metabolism" - because your metabolism changes all the time!!! It has nothing to do with your self limiting belief about WHO YOU ARE and everything to do with WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO DO AND EAT!!! Read: you can change that, girlfriend!
Let's look at a what happens during a plateau, for example. Your body has gotten used to you cutting calories, you changed your diet, and switched up your exercise habits. After 6-8 weeks, your body adjusts to the “new normal” and the pounds stop coming off. Weight loss, therefore, happens during the adjustment period; it’s a temporary occurrence as your body seeks a new equilibrium based on your new habits. Take up swimming - your body will respond initially and then stop. Same with cutting out sugar from your diet. You may lose 5 lbs initially but then you're body is so smart that it adjusts and now that's not enough!
Ever notice those gym rats who are faithfully crushing their workouts — they look the same or might not change much from one month to the next. Their bodies have adapted to their routine, and since their routine doesn’t change, neither do their bodies.
Bottom line: Weight loss occurs when you do something new and you do it often: FOR FAT LOSS TO WORK (AND CONTINUE TO WORK) TO HAVE TO CONSTANTLY SWITCH UP WHAT YOU'RE DOING!
exercise for Weight Loss: as a beginner
If you haven’t exercised for awhile, any type of physical activity will be new, so it almost doesn’t matter what you do for the first several weeks — simply exchanging “nothing” for “something” will do wonders on its own. Walk, hike, cycle, row, jog, dance, swim, whatever.
In the beginning, your priority should be establishing the exercise habit. For that, shorter, more frequent workouts work best so you don't get injured or bite off more than you can chew.
You can begin with as little as 10 minutes of exercise at a time — but you have to do it every day. Start there if you don’t have time for longer workout, working your way up to several short bouts of exercise a day.
This Is the Best Weight-Loss Workout
Right around 4-6 weeks into your new exercise program, “something” won’t cut it anymore, and you’ll need to become more strategic about your workouts to continue losing weight.
Strength training trumps traditional cardio like jogging or spinning when it comes to shedding fat because it causes a more sustained increase in your metabolism. But an even more effective approach is to combine aerobic and strength training with “metabolic conditioning.” Combine resistance exercises such as the push-up, squat, lunge, and plank and conditioning moves such the burpee, jumping jack, and bear crawl into a circuit, performing one set of each move back-to-back without rest. Once you’ve completed all of the exercises, rest for a minute or two, and then do the circuit again. Complete as many circuits as you can.
You’ll find this kind of training — often referred to as high intensity interval training (HIIT) — in Beachbody programs like the ones I do and run challenges with!
HIIT training provides the best of both worlds: the cardiovascular boosting, calorie burning benefits of aerobic training, and the muscle building, metabolism revving effects of strength work. It’s also time efficient: you only need to do 30 to 60 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise five days per week, or just 20 to 60 minutes of vigorous exercise three days per week. So if you have been running or spinning at long duration for years, you can cut your workout time almost in half if you increase the intensity or switch to a HIIT style program.
THE LOGISTICS: How Often You Need To Commit!
Three days a week if you do HIIT cardio aka Metabolic Conditioning. YUP! That's it. Funny how people think they don't have the time to dedicate to lose fat!!!
Takeaway
Start with several short (10-minute) bouts of exercise every day, and progress to three or more (20- to 30-minute) workouts every week. Once you notice the difference in how you look and feel — both in terms of your mood and your energy — exercise will give you that high and you will crave it!! Remember to measure your inches when you're burning fat - the scale doesn't tell the whole story!