Do you know what people’s problem is with losing weight? They think that some special weight loss exercises will start the weight loss process. But losing weight has its fixed rules, which have been determined by millions of years of evolution. Among other things, evolution has set your body up so that exercise alone is not enough to reduce weight.
If you go against these rules, well, good luck. You will need it because no weight loss training plan will work unless it is based on the biological rules of how your body works. Like it or not, you have to follow these rules. They do not negotiate with anyone.
You cannot say that they do not concern you and try your luck. You will fail like most people do year after year when they set resolutions but never succeed. In the best case, you lose a little, but it still won’t show on the character. In the worst case, there will be a yo-yo effect, because you don’t know how to fight against it.
Best Workouts to Lose Belly Fat
Your body wants only one thing. Survive. He doesn’t care that you want to lose weight. He does not need defined muscles to survive. So, if surviving means that you will have extra pounds, then you will have them. If you don’t know how the body works and by that, I mean that you know comprehensively how what happens when and under what conditions it occurs in your body, all the sit-ups and cardio in the world won’t guarantee you anything.
Some of these rules relate to caloric intake or the choice of suitable foods, others to weight loss exercises, and it is exercises that will be discussed in this article.
We will explain and clarify many controversial topics, and you will find that even exercises that seem unrelated to weight loss will help you lose weight much better than the commonly recommended weight loss exercises. But to begin with, we will start with one very important thing that almost no one solves.
Why is My Weight Stuck Even After Exercise and Diet?
Before you even begin to learn more about how to start losing weight, you should know that less weight does not automatically equal fat burning and a better figure. I will give you a very extreme example of this – people from concentration camps. They lost weight, but they didn’t look their best.
For some reason, people assume that losing weight will make them both healthier and better looking. But that won’t happen at all. Of course, you will see a change and in the best case you will be happy at first, but when you look at yourself, it will still not be the same.
In the worst case, you will end up with slim obesity (the so-called skinny fat figure). That is, when you look skinny, but you’ve lost a lot of muscle and still have a lot of fat on you.
You can Lose Weight in Three Ways:
- You lose fat – the most ideal case
- You retain less water – normally you lose some water when you lose weight and it can make up 1+ kilograms of the lost weight
- You will lose muscle – the worst-case scenario, because muscle gives you vitality, strength and makes you shapely
So, if you’re hoping that shedding pounds will make you healthier, stronger, and better looking when you look in the mirror, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Because of most “exercises for weight loss” you lose some fat, but also a lot of muscle.
I’m not just playing with words here. Losing weight in the sense of only seeing a smaller number on the scale is not the same as burning only fat.
Is It So Hard to Lose Belly Fat?
For obvious reasons, people want to lose weight as quickly as possible. Yes, you can lose weight quickly. But you shouldn’t do it faster than a healthy rate. Many people choose the completely wrong path.
Which They Find in Lifestyle Magazines Such as:
- Drastically limit food intake
- They try nonsense vegetable, fruit, smoothie, soup and I don’t know what other diets
- They do cardio classes
- They hardly ever work out in the gym
- Although they like rapid weight loss, a lot of it is also muscle
However, if they only lost fat and kept their muscles, they would lose weight more slowly, but they would have a much nicer figure. The surprising fact is, in fact, that weight doesn’t say anything at all about your fitness or whether you’ll look better/worse. You can even look diametrically different at the same weight if you have less fat and more muscle.
How can I Lose Pound Easily?
In order to change your body composition, you need to burn fat and maintain muscle. In the best case, increase the proportion of muscle mass and lose fat, which can only be achieved in the initial phase of exercise, but not in the long term.
So, as far as weight loss exercises are concerned, their role should not only be to burn as many calories as possible with them and therefore lose more weight, but to help you maintain muscle mass in addition to the calories you burn, or gain some.
Why Exercise is not The Best way to Lose Weight
The biggest desire of people is to drop mainly on the stomach. So, what are they going to do? Sit-ups, squats, planks or some core training. This way we could continue according to different muscle parts. Exercises for any muscle group do not work like this.
Actually, exercise alone does not cause weight loss at all, and tons of research says that exercise alone does not guarantee weight loss. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exercise. Exercise for weight loss has its important place in burning fat, you just need to know what role it actually plays in this whole puzzle.
The main trigger for burning fat is a caloric deficit, i.e. a state where you take in fewer calories than you burn during the day. However, a caloric deficit also triggers catabolic processes during weight loss, i.e. processes that break down your muscles.
Exercise Actually Helps You in Two Ways:
- Helps you burn energy and thus get into a caloric deficit more easily.
- Properly chosen exercises and a training plan give the muscles a stimulus to maintain or grow a little.
- I know you’d like to hear that certain exercises burn fat and ideally at the point where you’d like to lose it, unfortunately, scientific research confirms that it’s impossible to trigger fat burning in a specific batch.
In this study, subjects exercised their abs for six weeks and did not experience any loss of belly fat. In this study, they examined 40 overweight women. They divided them into two groups, when the first one did abdominal exercises and the second only adjusted their diet. The result? The exercise group did not experience abdominal fat loss.
Fastest Weight Loss Exercise
In another study, they had people exercise only the upper body and the result was that fat was lost evenly throughout the body. Even though some research suggests an increased rate of blood flow and fat breakdown in the areas where the muscle groups were exercised, the effect is very negligible and you’d have to have a microscope to even notice it.
Even when you store fat, you don’t just store it in one place. Although you have some parts where genetics has given you fatter, but overall, when you gain weight, you gain weight everywhere. The same applies to burning fat, so you will burn from everywhere.
Exercise Intensity and Weight Loss
A lot of trainers will also tell you that you need to exercise at some intensity or heart rate that puts you in the burn zone. This is also just another invention. These two researches are very interesting in this regard.
According to them, we can draw energy primarily from:
- Glycogen in muscles
- Fat in the muscles
- Blood glucose
- Free fatty acids in the blood (in layman’s terms, released fat reserves in the blood)
- Fat reserves
These studies have found that most experts are completely off the mark when it comes to their claims that one heart rate triggers another energy source and therefore suppresses the others. In fact, your body operates on all energy sources more or less simultaneously during various activities, if we do not consider the resting state. You even burn the fattest with it. Even now, as you read this article, you are burning fat.
When you run at a moderate pace, you reach for fat more, since you don’t need glycogen from the muscles as much, and vice versa, when strengthening you function primarily on glycogen and glucose in the blood. However, the differences are not as significant as you might think, and one energy source does not turn off at the expense of another.
If we consider that you burn around 200-250 calories in a 40-60-minute run and roughly the same amount in an hour in the gym with strength training, then you burn only 10-15% more fat from this energy, which is 20-37 calories, and which is 2-4 grams of extra fat in one day.
Yes, you read that right. You’ll burn an amazing 2-4 extra grams of fat while running than strength training, although you’ll be in an amazing fat-burning heart rate zone.
There are No Drawing Exercises
You may have already guessed that if the exercises as such do not burn fat, then there will probably not be much truth in the drawing exercises for weight loss. The truth is this: your muscles are toned. The problem is that they are not visible under the fat. The only way to “figure” them out is to reduce the fat percentage while still keeping them visible.
Gym Exercises for Weight Loss
Body shaping is often associated with losing weight. For that matter, the good news is that bodybuilding exercises exist as opposed to drawing exercises. But it works completely differently than you might think.
In order to explain it, it is necessary to start with what a formed figure means and how to work towards it. A well-formed figure is generally understood as a figure in which you can already see (at least start to see) the muscles and the figure begins to take shape, when you can already distinguish individual muscle parts.
For example, in men you see a transition between shoulders and biceps/triceps or you can say that in general it starts to have more masculine shapes like wider shoulders, bigger chest and so on. In the case of women, it is similar, just the opposite. Instead of a significant increase in muscle, which is typical of a male figure, a woman has a smaller proportion of fat, smaller but firmer female parts that give her a typical female appearance.
Is Gym Effective for Weight Loss
What is important, however, is that in both cases the shape is the result of a greater proportion of muscle and a smaller amount of fat that is, a change in body composition. In the case of men, it is gaining a significant amount of muscles, and in the case of women, gaining only a few kilos, which can mostly be counted on one hand.
However, whether a man or a woman wants to shape, both sexes will work on it equally. Exercises that will help them gain muscle mass. When it comes to weight loss and body shaping exercises, there are no fundamental differences in how men and women should exercise.
Basic exercises such as bench press, squats, deadlifts, push-ups, military press, pull-ups with a large barbell, dips should be part of every quality training. In the case of women, there will also be a hip trust exercise. The point is that genetics has arranged for us something that many people, especially women, do not know about it.
If you take men and women and give them the same core workout and do it at the same intensity for their weight and current capabilities, over time both men and women will get more in shape. It’s just that women will be smaller, slimmer and stronger, and men will be bigger, slimmer and stronger.
What are The Best Exercises for Weight Loss?
- The best exercises for weight loss, or A weight loss training plan should meet the following criteria:
- They burn a lot of calories
- They will protect your muscles
- They don’t train you
As you can see, your type of training is more important than just having any training. Unfortunately, most weight loss training plans are just a bunch of exercises that don’t really accomplish anything.
Which Cardio Burns the Most Fat
If you ask anyone what is the best way to lose weight, they will tell you that diet and exercise. You can’t disagree with that. When you ask how to exercise, you most often hear to start running. I’m not saying you don’t have it, but classic running is nowhere near as effective as it’s claimed to be.
In fact, running does not guarantee weight loss, and you can even gain weight after it. Every time I enter the gym, I just mentally shake my head at the poor fate of all those people who toil on treadmills, but don’t see the desired results. Estimate how much you’ll burn in an hour of cardio at a moderate pace.
200-250 calories. It is a:
- 50 grams of peanut butter
- 1 burner
- Half a litter of sweetened drink
One hour of hard work and you haven’t really burned anything. You only need to eat very little and you will easily burn through your calories. Not to mention that cardio does not build or help maintain muscle in a caloric deficit.
Yes, you could run longer and harder, but that will tire you out quickly. In addition, if you don’t know how to correctly put together a diet for weight loss, you will end up very poorly, over trained and mentally and physically exhausted.
What Type of Cardio is Most Effective
The worst part is that you get used to classic cardio very quickly. Your body wants to remain in homeostasis, i.e. in a state where it has balanced functioning. Among other things, it will also adapt in that any activity that you repeat for a long time will burn less and less energy over time.
This will reduce your caloric deficit, slow down weight loss and even stop it over time. When this happens, most people don’t know what’s going on and they go back and forth – adding more cardio and cutting back on food.
Although this will help and they will begin to lose weight, it will put your body under a lot of stress and, worst of all, muscle loss. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do cardio at all, but the less the better. But how much is exactly, and most importantly, what type of cardio is most suitable for weight loss?
But to make it short, the best thing to do is:
- You limit cardio to a maximum of 1-2 hours a week
- One cardio workout will not last more than 30 minutes
- Instead of classic endurance running, you will do HIIT cardio, ideally sprints
The point is that cardio training negatively affects both strength performance and muscle growth/regeneration if you overdo it. And this negative impact is even greater if you are in a caloric deficit. On the other hand, short and intense cardio won’t put your muscles at risk and you can burn more with it than with classic cardio.
In this study, they took 10 men and 10 women and divided them into 2 groups. They made one practice 4-6 30-second sprints with 4-6-minute breaks. The second group did 30-60 minutes of cardio at a moderate pace at a heart rate of 65% of their maximum. Which is the recommended heart rate for weight loss.
After six weeks, the sprinting group burned more fat. So, HIIT cardio can burn more fat and at the same time it doesn’t take too long to affect muscle mass.
Does Strength Training Burn Belly Fat?
Just as many people incorrectly associate toned abs with abdominal exercises, they also incorrectly associate strength training in the gym with bulking or gaining muscle. Probably because they focus too much on the number on the scale and because they want to get it down as quickly as possible, and weight training tends to gain weight, they don’t even think about the important role that weight training in the gym can play in losing weight. Yes, you can gain weight by strengthening, but not if you are in a caloric deficit.
You can only gain muscle in a caloric deficit in three cases:
- You are obese
- You have never strengthened before and you can use the so-called novice effect – but it only lasts a few weeks
- You are on steroids
The point is that gaining muscle requires a higher caloric intake for your body to even be able to build muscle. In contrast, during a caloric deficit, you have a significantly reduced rate of protein synthesis and an increased rate of catabolism, so you cannot build much muscle.
BUT, you can maintain them with strength training better than any other exercise and even speed up fat burning. For example, this study divided 196 men and women of different ages into three groups. The first group did strength training three times a week, the second group ran for 45 minutes three times a week, and the third group did both running and strength training.
Which Group Lost the Most Weight?
After eight months of testing, the running group lost the most weight. However, as you already know, losing weight is not the same as losing weight. This group also lost the most muscles. The group combining running and strength training had the best results, because they burned the fattest and gained some muscle at the same time.
This study and this study had similar findings. Simply put, if you want to maintain muscle, or even gain some while burning as much fat as possible, the best thing to do is to combine cardio and strength training.
Is Strength Training Best for Weight Loss?
Before we look at specific exercises, you should first know that the best strength training for weight loss should meet two critical points:
- It burns a lot of calories
- It will gradually load your muscles so they don’t get used to it
- All this so that you don’t over-train and are able to regenerate sufficiently.
If any training can do it, it is training that primarily uses complex exercises that involve several muscle groups at once, namely:
- Deadlift
- Squats
- Bends
- Dips
- Bench press
- Military press
Since you’re engaging more muscles, you’ll naturally burn more energy than if you were doing isolated exercises like bicep curls. This does not mean that you should not do isolated exercises. You can, but they shouldn’t be the main thing you base your training on.
It is also important that you perform these exercises at an intensity of 70%+ of your maximum. Ideally, however, more at the level of 80-85%. This means that if you were to lift a maximum of 80 kilos for one repetition of an exercise, you should train with a weight of 80 x 0.8 = 64 kilos.
What Workout Burns Belly Fat Fast
The reason is very simple, on the one hand, such intensity will easily keep your muscles, but it will also burn you much more energy than if you were lifting light weights and trying to draw.
This study by Greek scientists confirms this. When they compared the group exercising at 80-85% of their maximum intensity, they burned much more energy than the group that exercised with weights at 45-65% of their maximum intensity. And this study also confirms it. Four challenging sets of deadlifts can even burn up to 100 calories.
What Weight Loss Exercises are Suitable for Beginners?
As you already know, exercise alone does not cause fat burning. You burn them if you are in a caloric deficit. Exercising only helps you maintain muscle mass and also burn more calories, making it easier for you to burn a little more energy. You also already know that they should ideally have exercises.
- Burn a lot of calories
- Protect your muscles
- Not train you
However, the deadlift, for example, will burn a lot of calories, but as a beginner, not everyone would have to master it, as it requires a lot of technique. Does this mean all is lost? At all. You just have to find a substitute for it. For example, the hex bar deadlift is very safe even for beginners. No exercise is irreplaceable.
In addition, if you have started working out in the gym, you can put as much load on each exercise as you can handle at the moment, so an important piece of advice for you. (it’s not about the exercises at all) You can easily choose the ones that suit you better at the beginning, provided that they are mainly complex exercises, that is, exercises involving several muscle groups.
The fact that squats, deadlifts, push-ups, pull-ups, etc. just because they burn a lot of calories doesn’t mean that everyone can easily handle them. If, for example, you can’t handle push-ups, they can be easily replaced with upper pulley pull-ups at the beginning.
Weight Loss Workout Plan
- In order to put into practice everything that has been said here, a high-quality training plan for weight loss should essentially look like this:
- 3-4 strength training sessions per week, 1 training session lasting around 60 minutes
- 3 strength trainings per week, 1 training around 45-60 minutes + 2 HIIT cardio trainings lasting max. 25 minutes.
Weight Loss Training Plans
- Strength training 5×5
- Strength training 5×5 is a classic when it comes to training for volume, but you can also use it as training for weight reduction.
Week 1
- Monday – training A
- Tuesday – break
- Wednesday – training B
- Thursday – break
- Friday – training A
- Saturday – break
- Sunday – break
Week 2
- Monday – training B
- Tuesday – break
- Wednesday – training A
- Thursday – break
- Friday – training B
- Saturday – break
- Sunday – break
Weight Loss Summary
As you have just learned, movement alone will not ensure that you shed excess pounds and have a more beautiful figure. There is more to losing weight than just a smaller number on the scale. You need to burn fat while maintaining muscle mass, which people commonly lose during weight loss because they choose the wrong weight loss exercises.
However, you already know that this is the most suitable HIIT cardio and strength training. Also, don’t forget that the right diet plays a key role in losing weight and you need to adjust your diet correctly.