Finding the best workout routine for weight loss can seem like a difficult proposition, but it is actually pretty simple to figure out. Loosing pounds is all about how many calories you burn equaling out to more than the amount of calories you take in. A good diet can help you lower your calorie intake in a way that is healthy and conductive to loosing weight, but lowering your caloric intake to less than your body burns is almost impossible without some sort of exercise. Read on to find out how to maximize your workout for loosing weight, and why some kinds of activity work better for weight loss than others.
Why Don’t All Exercises Burn Calories?
There are two primary styles of workouts that will yield very different results. Weight lifting, slow pushups and situps, and other exercises 
that work your muscles without significantly raising your heart rate are known as anaerobic. Anaerobic workouts can be a great way to make the muscles that help you look and feel good get stronger, but when taken alone they do not actually do anything to help you burn calories. Because of this issue, an anaerobic workout will not actually help you loose weight.
Exercises like running, swimming, and riding a bike are all considered aerobic. Aerobic exercises may build some muscle in the areas you use for the workout, but their primary purpose is getting your heart rate up high enough long enough to burn calories and increase endurance. When you fill your workout routine with aerobic exercises, you are much more likely to burn a significant enough amount of calories to make a difference.
Aerobic Exercise: The Key To Loosing Weight
When you spend half an hour to an hour every day practicing an aerobic workout routine, you do the best thing you can possibly do for your body. The key to using exercises for loosing weight is getting your heart rate up past your resting rate for as long as you can keep going. Any activity that keeps your heart rate where it needs to be can be used to burn calories as long as it gets your heart going and makes you work. There is no aerobic workout out there that will not help you reach your target weight.
Anything Is Better Than Nothing
One of the great things about an aerobic workout is how easy it is to match an activity to your lifestyle and health level. If you are busy all day and can’t find time to go to a gym, you can get all of the benefits you need by simply parking far away and walking fast enough to get your heart going frequently throughout the day. If high impact exercise is difficult due to your current weight or health problems, an aerobic workout like swimming or biking can be a perfect way to help you shed pounds and stay healthy. The key to seeing a benefit is choosing an activity you enjoy doing enough to push past the first few weeks of difficulty and continuing to do it at least three to five times a week. As long as your heart rate goes up and stays up, your weight will go down and stay down.
Tips For Getting The Most Out Of Your Workout
Many people who try to loose weight with activity tend to fail for simple and easy to avoid reasons. The first trap is choosing a gym routine or workout that you don’t enjoy doing. Since aerobic activity has such a universal benefit, a lot of doing something you like will do much better in the long run than a few trips to the gym. The next trap is treating yourself to a high calorie snack or sports drink after your workout. If you are serious about weight loss, drink water and avoid the power bars. You can loose all the benefit of a great workout by loading yourself with sugar as soon as its over. Finally, many people stop exercising once the weight is gone. Unfortunately, this mistake will let the pounds pile right back on. Choose an activity you love, and try to do it as often as possible for the rest of your life if you really want to get healthy and stay that way.
I have the firm belief that there is only one healthy way to lose weight. And that is cardio exercises. If your thing is to sit back and eat Cheetos then you will certainly never lose weight. If you want to be healthy, you must want to work out. Make exercising fun and you will want to do it. Cardio exercises is what is working best for me.
Swimming is an amazing exercise to lose weight. Open water swimming is a great deal more strenuous than traditional pool exercise. You are forced to contend with the currents and tides, which provide a lot of additional resistance. I would caution anyone attempting to add this to your exercise regime to swim where there is a lifeguard on duty (and never alone).
Jogging worked wonders for me. I definitely recommend jogging.
Press ups and sit ups tighten the stomach thereby reducing appetite
Hi, interesting to read some of the comments about the best exercises for weight loss. Your sypnosis on ‘enjoying an aerobic activity’ whatever it may be, definately sums up the way an individual will lose weight and have a better chance of ensuring it stays off. It is also very important that they ensure their calorific intake is controlled but not significantly reduced so that their basal metabolic rate is not lowered. Good blog, easy to understand and simple for people to relate to.
I have found that the best exercises to lose weight are those that are short, but high intensity and work multiple muscle groups at the same time. A great example of one of these exercises would be mountain climbers. By engaging multiple muscle groups and getting the heart rate up, these babies can really get the metabolism up which is key to burning fat. Also short, intense workout can keep your heart rate up for hours after you’re done working out which means more calories burnt while you’re resting.
Any exercise done on a regular basis is beneficial and having a number of exercises you enjoy doing is all the better. Although swimming is one of the best exercises to burn body fat, not everyone enjoys swimming.
Losing weight by burning fat through exercise is also a key factor for high intensity weight loss, but most of the time we tend to decline weight loss through the food that we eat, leaving your exercise to desolate, so food compensates exercise and vice versa. Raw and nutritious foods such as drinking a glass of water before and after every meal, vegetables, and taking note of the amount of calories you consume everyday to adjust carbohydrate and protein intake, etc. are also contributing factors for efficient weight loss.
I have found that weight training that works large muscle groups work best for me. Squats, bench presses, dead lifts. One pound of muscle burns up about 50 calories a day just to keep it surviving. Add 5 pounds of muscle and your body burns up 250 calories a day at rest. I also find that spreading meals evenly across the day helps === 6 small meals versus 3 big ones.
Squats deadlifts and bench presses are the big 3 because they require the largest amount of muscle energy to perform. Squats require the most energy. Eat frequent small meals instead of gorging yourself like most of America.
I think everyone knows that exercise is critically important and necessary for weight loss and good health. But only a fraction of the population is discipline enough to make it a vital part of their lifestyle
I know cardiovascular training is good but I do think you have to lift some weights as well in order to gain some muscles, because we have to remember that the more muscle mass we have the more calories we are burning on a regular basis.
With cardio you basically burn most during the activity and not so much before or after
I agree with Jonathan saying training large groups of muscles have the best benefits not only muscle wise – but also cardio wise
I like your website. Exercise is a very good method to lose weight. It takes time, energy, effort and determination.
Cardio is an excellent way to exercise for weight loss but weight training helps to continue burning calories even after workouts. It’s really best to have a combination of the two.
This is a wonderful post, please keep it up. It is very informative, but only people who are diligent to put it to work will see results and achieve their weight loss goals.
I also know about another method of losing weight that was probably not mentioned in the post. Its about feeling good and being happy while working on your body. It involves dancing and several other simple things people love to do but don’t know they can lose weight from them.
I like the part when you mentioned weight training as a non weight loss exercise because it is an anaerobic exercise and does add mass to our muscles that also gives us extra pound. I believe aerobic or cardio exercises does great with all the sweats and fats that it burns it does make us lose more weight.
According to me better than walking on a flat surface totally different. Just find a treadmill that can tilt 10 to 15 degrees and walk on it for 15-20 minutes. This melts the fat in the waist, hips, thighs and buttocks quickly.
I got a tip, while you have an exercise routine: Eat more fiber.
Sometimes belly bulges are caused by a downright
embarrassing problem: constipation. To combat this, you
should consume at least 35 grams of fiber each day in the
form of whole grains, fruits and vegetables. This will
keep your bowel movements regular and, in turn, make your
stomach appear flatter.
I really like the responses. They add a lot of variety.
I believe that you should find an enjoyable exercise or event that you really like and add little things to make it enjoyable but challenging.
For instance, if you like to walk, walk backwards for a little time or do a few leg cross-over drills to challenge different muscles/joints an to add variety to your routine.
It’s very productive and keeps you motivated.
Performing aerobic exercises is tiring for me. But when you are beginning to experience the taste of triumph over gaining weight, you’ll realize that it is worth all of your effort.
I love zumba workouts! You really work up a sweat.