Treadmill Routine For Weight Loss

One of the reasons that treadmills are among the most popular exercise machines is that they help you to burn a lot of calories in a relatively short period of time. In order to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume. Treadmill routines for weight loss maximize your time spent so you see results when pairing exercise with a low-calorie diet and other daily physical activity.

Treadmill Features

A treadmill is a versatile machine that allows you to walk, jog or run indoors. When considering a treadmill to use for a weight loss routine, be sure it has an incline feature that reaches or exceeds 10 percent and a sturdy enough frame to go up to at least 8 mph. More expensive models may also offer a calorie counter and heart rate readout, along with data on speed, distance traveled and incline.

Calorie Burning Potential

The calories you burn in any workout depend on your intensity, efficiency of movement, size and body composition. A 150-lb person running at a steady 6 mph burns, on average, about 670 calories per hour, according to the Calories per Hour website. If you add an incline of 5 percent, you increase your calorie burn to 830 calories. Increasing your speed to 8 mph raises your calorie burn to almost 900 calories in an hour.

Considerations

Most people do not start out being able to run a steady 8 mph for an hour straight. Even going 6 mph for an entire hour takes several months of training if you are new to running. Walking burns fewer calories than running. That same 150-lb. person burns just 272 calories going at a fast walk of 4 mph. Only when you increase your incline to 10 or 15 percent does your walk begin to match the calorie burn of running. The tradeoff, however, is fewer injuries, soreness and joint impact.

Interval Training

For the majority of people using the treadmill, maintaining calorie-blasting speeds are not realistic for long periods of time. Adding in intervals of speed, however, is an effective way to increase your overall calorie burn without completely wearing you out or causing injury. An Australian study in a 2008 edition of the International Journal of Obesity found that interval training consisting of maximum speed sprints alternated with more moderate segments of work spurred significant fat loss in participants after 15 weeks of three-day per week training when compared to steady state efforts.
A sample interval training workout includes a five to seven minute warm up at an easy pace. Then conduct one minute bouts of your absolute fastest speed followed by two minutes at a light jog or moderate walk. Perform eight to 10 of these intervals and then cool down to create a complete routine. If you are unable to run, try performing the minute speed intervals as power hill climbs up a 10 to 15 percent grade. Over time, increase your speed during the intervals or the length at which you sustain the high intensity portion.

Longer Sessions

Interval training is not your only treadmill weight loss program option. Going at a steady pace that revs your heart rate and makes you break a sweat can also help you to lose belly fat. You just have to go for at least 45 minutes, five times a week according to a study in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 2005. Researchers found that participants who exercised just 30 minutes five times per week were able to stave off the gain of additional belly fat, but only those who exceeded 30 minutes---and jogged the equivalent of 20 miles per week---were able to lose belly fat.