Many people who lose weight at some stage decide to combine diet with exercise. The choice of workouts to lose weight is huge and it is really easy to find something that suits our tastes and capabilities. Any form of exercise helps in weight loss because it generates a caloric deficit. But what exercises to lose weight should you do to make your workout as effective as possible? How much weight can you lose by exercising?
What exercises for weight loss?
The thought of physical activity is an obvious element when you decide to lose weight. When losing weight, you cannot forget about the role of a properly planned diet. Weight loss based on a combination of diet and exercise is widely considered to be more effective and healthier. In fact, according to scientific studies, the effectiveness of weight loss based on diet alone and exercise alone is similar. However, by combining a low-calorie diet with training, it is easier to generate a sufficiently high calorie deficit that allows you to lose body fat. In order for the exercises themselves to give visible weight loss, you need to burn a minimum of 400-600 kcal per day, which corresponds to an hour of running or swimming, or a two-hour walk or yoga session. Devoting 1-2 hours every day to exercise is impossible for many people due to other responsibilities. Therefore, it seems to be most valuable to combine a diet that will generate part of the caloric deficit with training, which is responsible for the rest of it and has numerous health benefits.
How do exercises to lose weight help?
- They generate a caloric deficit.
- Controlling hunger and satiety signals is more effective.
- Thanks to properly selected exercises, the composition of the body of a person who is losing weight is better. There is less loss of muscle mass, and greater losses of body fat.
- Exercise is healthy. They improve the condition of the circulatory system, reduce the risk of metabolic diseases, in particular insulin resistance and diabetes, reduce the fattening of internal organs and the risk of depression.
- Exercise improves mood.
How to choose exercises to lose weight?
You are probably asking yourself what exercises to do to lose weight. Who to listen to? After all, you can hear so many different opinions from every side. “Cardio is the best way to lose weight!”. “Cardio doesn’t lose weight as well as strength training.” “There is no point in walking.” “Walking is best for beginners.” You can get confused.
Indeed, some types of training are more effective in terms of burning calories. But the truth is – when you are just starting your adventure with regular physical activity, the most important thing is to move at all. Preferably at least 3 times a week, but choose the type of exercise according to your physical and time capabilities.
Weight loss exercises – marching
Can walking lose weight? Absolutely. The length and pace of the march are important, because it is the march rather than the walk that will help you visibly lose weight. However, these distances are achievable for everyone. On average, a person weighing 70 kg burns about 160 kcal during 30 minutes of walking at a pace of about 6 km/h. It is a brisk walk, during which a person who is not used to exercise may get out of breath while talking.
An hour of brisk walking a day allows you to burn 300 kcal. It is enough to reduce the caloric value of the diet by an additional 200 kcal to get rid of 0.5 kg of body fat per week. Of course, the human body is not a machine and sometimes pure mathematical calculations do not work 100%. However, they allow you to estimate what kind of effects you can expect during weight loss.
Walking can be classified as one of the most intuitive and simplest weight loss exercises. No equipment, no accessories, no going to the gym and no planning time specifically for training. If you don’t have the time, motivation or conditions to do other weight loss exercises, start with marches. Walking is an ideal way to increase physical activity for beginners and those who are severely overweight, when more intense training can put too much strain on the joints. It is enough to start walking to points up to 3 km away (half an hour of walking), e.g. to work, shopping, to a friend, instead of driving a car, to notice positive effects on the scale.
Losing weight through running
Running is the first choice exercise for most people who are starting to lose weight. No wonder. Running quickly raises the heart rate, we get out of breath, sweat, and are constantly on the move. All this is associated with losing kilograms. In addition, shoes and tracksuits are enough to run. You can run anywhere, even on the streets around the estate. Although it is healthier for the joints if the substrate is cushioning, like ground or grass.
Running, as a way to lose weight, is really effective. A person weighing 70 kg burns an average of 300 kcal during a 30-minute run at a pace of 8 km/h, and 370 kcal when running at a speed of 10 km/h. Start with 30 minutes of running 3-4 times a week to support effective weight loss and gradually increase your training.
What is also important, running is one of the exercises that are particularly efficient at burning visceral fat, i.e. the fat surrounding the internal organs. Adipose tissue around internal organs is more dangerous to health than subcutaneous tissue, because it is important in the development of metabolic diseases.