Obesity can lead to many heart problems. Maintaining an ideal body weight not only aid in good health, but it also helps in improving self-confidence. There are thousands of videos and programs available on weight loss. Weight loss exercises have many health benefits. Depending on your goal, you can workout to improve strength, improve cardio fitness, improve flexibility, burn the body fat, manage weight or just relax your body. The aim of this article is to educate readers on developing a particular program that helps to lose body weight. I am not going to discuss specific exercises or recommend a product here in this article for weight loss. Rather, I want to keep this article open for readers to try to use whatever they can, wherever they can, to gain better health through exercises.
One thing that I am going to stress though is, visceral fat is more harmful and dangerous for your health than fat at any other part of the body. What I mean is, there is nothing wrong in trying to get those sculpted arms to wear a nice summer dress, but please concentrate on fat around abdominal muscles or core muscles rather than just prioritizing losing fat around arms and legs. By saying that, you can surely perform the full-body workout and achieve all at once!!
Major things you need to remember for weight loss exercises are as below.
Include Warm-Ups and Cool Down:
You can do this in multiple ways. You can walk or jog or do ellipticals at a lower intensity. Start your exercise session at little lower intensity (the intensity at which you can hold a conversation while exercising/ able to speak a sentence without getting out of breath) for 10 to 15 minutes. For warm-ups or cool down, you can perform stretching of all major muscles of the body. This is the best way to prepare all your muscles for the exercise sessions and to prevent any damage to the muscles. Just make sure your heart rate is higher than the resting heart rate (normal heart rate is 70 – 80 beats per minute), but not at 50 % to 60 % of your maximum heart rate. (you can count your maximum heart rate based on your age with formula 220-age).
Try to Perform Cardio At Least 5 Days a Week:
It is good to perform cardio exercises for 5 days a week for around 30 minutes a day. American college of sports medicines (ACSM) recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercises per week. You can perform this as 30 minutes of a session for 5 days or 60 minutes of a session for three days based on your schedule.
Now, I know it is very easy to write this and recommend the guidelines. But it actually becomes difficult with our busy schedule to squeeze in this session daily basis. Work, kids, home chores… those never-ending tasks and PLUS THIS EXERCISES SESSION!!! I get it. So one thing I will say is, try to do as much as you can. As long as you’re moving (with your heart rate up), every step counts and every minute helps to tone those muscles. If you try, it can become easy to get your daily cardio in. For example, use stairs instead of elevators at work, park your car far so you can walk a few hundred steps to get to your office, play with your toddler for 10 minutes, etc.
Now on the contrary side, please don’t exercise for one day a month and say Bijal said, every step counts but no results in losing weight!! Be persistent to gain your results, please.
What is Cardio Exercise:
Some examples of cardio exercises are, running, jogging, elliptical exercises, Bikram Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Pilates, Tai-chi, push-ups, planks, side planks, etc. you can mix and match these. And change it up often so you can still have fun with it.
A good way to know if you are actually performing cardio exercises or not is to check your heart rate. Cardio exercises should be somewhere in 60 to 80 % of your maximum heart rate. You can calculate the maximum heart rate based on your age (220-age) and find out the range of 60 to 80%.
Only Cardio will not Reduce Weight.
Performing Cardio exercises will improve your cardiopulmonary fitness or functional endurance, or stamina in other words. It will help you in the long run to sculpt your body but not really too many effects on weight loss. You really need to concentrate exercises on a particular body area to reduce fat. Also, you need to push a little harder than cardio fitness for weight loss.
Flexibility Training:
Flexibility training of 10 to 20 minutes three times a week helps to improve joint range of motion. The best way to perform this is by slow gentle stretching of your muscles. You want to hold each stretch for 15 to 30 seconds. Exercises like yoga or Tai- Chi exercises incorporate cardio as well as stretching exercises in one session!!
Resistance Training:
You can perform strengthening 3 days a week: Even these days of resistance training, you can rotate your concentration from arms strengthening one day, and leg strengthening the other day. Resistance training along with cardio exercises tone the muscles by increasing muscle mass and as a result, reduces body fat.
Tighten Belly muscles/ Core muscles:
This is very important and many times people forget about this. Now don’t worry, this is not another type of exercise. You need to tighten your belly every time you exercise. In fact, you can tighten your belly anytime a day, while breathing, while talking, while working, and tone those core muscles. This automatically will help you develop tone in your core muscles. You can still perform some pilates or core strengthening exercises and tighten your belly. While performing cardio or strengthening of other body parts, pull your belly in, and you are getting bonus points!!
Few Bonus POINTS that will help you in your weight loss journey:
- DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH
- Keep changing the exercises to prevent boredom and burnout.
- The diet helps to reduce weight, but please try toning your muscles along with dieting:
- Eat a lighter snack 30 to 45 minutes prior to your exercise session:
- Don’t overdo it:
- Mix and Match/ change the gears but STICK TO IT – It really works.
Hope this article helps you to gain a little idea about weight loss. So that you can customize your own workout routine to reduce weight loss with fun. Have a happy exercise session!