How to workout for WEIGHT LOSS

 

The way is simple. There are many different ways of how to workout for WEIGHT LOSS, and that’s a good thing! With the variety that’s available, you can choose what you find most enjoyable and can keep consistent with!

 

 

Weight loss vs. Fat loss

 

Now, before we jump into it, I have to clear up the misconception of “weight loss”. Yes, that is the ultimate result of what we want in our journey, but I want to be more specific to focus on the “fat loss” because maintaining a healthy level of muscle is important and we shouldn’t just focus all of our attention on what we see on the scale.

This is something I’m personally very guilty of, though not exactly for the weight loss part, instead weight gain from building muscle. I was often too focused on just getting my weight higher and not following more closely that my fat levels were coming up just as fast.

 

 

The workouts for WEIGHT LOSS

 

Let’s break it down to the many different types of workout and workout routines that can be the most effective for weight loss.

 

 

Weight/resistance training

 

 

This is by far my favorite way to workout for weight loss. That can be a little bit surprising to most people, and even myself for most of the time. We often don’t put weight training as one of the most effective ways of weight loss, that’s for a few reasons. One, it doesn’t usually burn as much calories as other styles of workouts.  Two, because of the needed breaks between sets, it can often look like you’re working out “less hard”. Lastly, because unfortunately it’s a common belief that weight training “bulks you up” which sounds like it causes weight gain.

 

 

However, all of these are not necessarily true and shouldn’t be the reasons you might avoid weight training. A secret when it comes to fitness is that often, many of these components (weight training, cardio, diets) work together as a whole supporting each other to get you to your fitness goals. A deeper breakdown of how Lifting weights makes you lose weight can be found here  (coming soon).

 

 

 

Which weight/resistance training workout for weight loss?

 

BUILD MUSCLE

 

 

Two important points. One, you must focus on properly training your muscles by progressive overload (doing the exercise with a gradual increase in difficulty), good workout schedule/plan, adequate protein, and actually BUILDING MUSCLE (again, don’t worry if you think that this is going to make you “get big” if that’s something you don’t want, that takes years of training and diet)
Simply put however, having more muscle mass causes your body to consistently burn more calories.

 

 

 

COMPOUND MOVEMENTS

 

Second, you must use many muscles per exercise as you can. Using more than one muscle in an exercise is called a compound movement. The reason why this is important is because it uses more calories and therefore, burns more fat. Common examples of compound exercises are squats, deadlifts, bench press etc. You can find out more on doing compound movements here How to workout effectively (and why it’s important)(coming soon).

 

 

Which cardio exercises workout for weight loss?

 

 

Cardio exercises

 

Cardio-vascular exercise is basically when you increase heart rate and respiration through repetitive movements. So, this in fact does cover every sort of exercise that we might do.
What is more commonly known as “cardio” typically refers to when we REALLY feel it in our heart rate and breathing rate.

Let me break that down simply, there is high-intensity and there is low-intensity­ cardio exercise.  More specifically, how we divide the two differs for every single person (based on resting heart rate, age and gender as a VO₂ max) this can be either be calculated here or using (but typically using both methods) an informal (and usually kind of “ballpark”) method of judging how you feel as a rate of perceived exertion (RPE). Low-intensity should feel like its easy on a scale of 1-10, should be less than 5, and still able to keep a conversation while performing the exercise (like walking). High-intensity should feel higher on the scale, closer to 7 and higher, and it will be either difficult keeping the conversation or not at all.

 

 

Which is better for WEIGHT LOSS?

 

 

High-intensity cardio

 

For those exercises that really get your heart and breathing going (70-90% intensity). These exercises often feel like they are the best for weight loss (especially with the excessive sweating), but that may not be necessarily so. The reasoning behind is because of how our body uses energy. At very high intensity levels (90% intensity) our bodies use the anaerobic system which only burns your energy levels (free carbs available in your body) and cannot be sustained. However, for medium-high intensity (70%-80%) this may be favorable.
High-intensity cardio exercises do range in variety, lets look at a few.

 

 

 

Running/biking

 

I chose these two specific exercises just for the sake that they’re easily accessible and also easily found in most gyms as cardio machines, but these options can be interchangeable with any exercise that can achieve a high intensity (60-80%) (basketball, boxing, rowing etc.). These exercises are great because people can make a really solid habit of doing an exercise that is controllable and fun. Of course, proper regimen is still required, you can control the intensity of the exercise most easily by pace and duration along with other factors such as incline and extra resistance (weight with running or gears on a bike).  Overall, this can be a simple and effective way of weight loss.

 

 

 

 

 

Circuit training

 

Similarly, to our weight/resistance training, the difference and fun thing that circuit training brings is it increases the intensity by shortening the rest times. What this does is, increases heart rate and breathing, therefore making it a great cardio exercise.
There are many ways to organize a circuit exercise, whether you’re focusing on a specific group of muscles or whole body, what’s important is that you keep your heart rate up for the whole circuit.

 

 

 

HIIT (high intensity interval training)

 

Perhaps this may be the most effective high intensity training you can do for WEIGHT LOSS. Like the name of the exercise, this is where you split your cardio intensity into intervals. A common structure would be 4-minute high intensity (90%) and 3-minute passive recovery (where you slow things down quite a bit but still move) (50%), and repeat this cycle for about 30 minutes. One of the greatest benefits of this style of exercise is that you can achieve in 30 minutes the same effectiveness of fat loss as 60 minutes of low intensity exercise. (1)

 

 

 

Low-intensity cardio

 

Exercises that should almost feel like a “walk in the park” because they can be literally that. This is where you’re looking for exercises that feel relatively easy (45%-75% intensity) and can do for an extended period of time (up to 60 minutes or more).
A crucial factor when it comes to low-intensity cardio is, again, how your body uses energy. One of the systems available in our bodies is the fatty-acid oxidation, that our body targets and uses fat as energy specifically in the range of 45-75% intensity (and most effectively after 30 minutes). (2)

 

 

 

Steady-state cardio

 

Any sort of prolonged exercise that can achieve an intensity of 45%-75% would be suitable. Most common ones would be any cardio equipment or even a brisk walk. What’s important here is to keep your heart rate at the correct intensity for the most fat-loss. What’s also important for this type of exercise is the duration, a minimum of 30-60 minutes.

 

 

 

Calorie usage

 

The reasons I haven’t mentioned the amounts of calories each exercise/type of exercises uses is because similarly to how we shouldn’t focus too on the numbers we see in a scale, we also shouldn’t focus too much on the number of calories burned we see on the cardio machines, rather focus on your heart rate.
Still, here’s some data comparing some averages of calorie usage in different exercises.

 

 

 

 

Which is the BEST workout for WEIGHT LOSS?

With the information stated above, all of the exercises are excellent and effective for weight loss. The important takeaways here are to have proper regimen and do what you can most consistently. Those are the routines that are going to get you the results the fastest. And again, one of the secrets is that not even just building muscle, but having muscle causes consistent fat loss. So, why not build muscle at the same time?

 

 

Also, don’t forget, the only way you can maximize your weight loss is by controlling that you eat LESS than the energy you use throughout the day. These workouts for weight loss are create to increase the energy you use throughout the day, but the bigger side of the coin is still what you eat throughout the day.

Timur Yigit