Cardio Workout Routines To Lose Weight

Cardiovascular exercise is often recommended as a strategy for weight loss. Weight loss occurs when you eat fewer calories than you burn overtime, in other words, create a calorie deficit. The best cardio routines for weight loss vary your duration, method and intensity so your body remains challenged and burns maximal calories. Consistency with your workouts is also key--skipping weeks at a time will not help you lose weight. Make sure you find a cardio mode that you enjoy so you stick with it for the long-term.

Significance

Cardiovascular exercise helps you lose weight by increasing your daily calorie burn. Burning more calories means you can eat more and still maintain a deficit. It also means that you can create bigger deficits than you might be able to achieve with diet alone---as you must eat at least 1,200 calories as a woman and 1,500 per day as a man to maintain energy and proper nutrition, reports Medline Plus.

Expert Recommendations

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends you do an hour to 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise five days per week. Any exercise that gets your heart pumping and causes you to break a sweat qualifies as moderate intensity cardio exercise. Breaking into smaller sessions, as short as 10 minutes, is an acceptable way to fit in your cardio, according to ACSM.

Types of Cardio

You have lots of options when it comes to finding a cardio workout that appeals to you. You can always take up running, swimming or cycling. Aerobics classes that offer continuous cardio like kickboxing, Latin dance or step are another alternative. Stationary cardio machines like the elliptical, ski simulators and rowing machines are other indoor options. A brisk walk fast enough to elevate your heart rate to an aerobic zone works for most fitness levels. If you cannot walk fast enough to make your heart rate rise, try seeking out hills or walking on a super incline treadmill.

Considerations

Combining your cardio workout with a low-calorie diet requires some experimenting. You must take in enough calories to provide proper fuel for your workout, but not eat so much that you negate all the work you have done by over-consuming calories. If you are new to exercise, the prospect of doing cardio exercise for a full hour or more daily may seem overwhelming. Start with minimal expectations--go just 15 to 20 minutes your first week or so and gradually increase the duration of your workouts by 10 percent each subsequent week, recommends the American Council on Exercise.

Interval Training

If you already perform cardio exercise and are not seeing the weight loss results you desire, consider interval training. Steady-state cardio in which you work at an even level for a specific period of time has value in terms of burning calories and building a general level of cardiovascular endurance. Overtime, your body adapts to the exercise and becomes efficient--meaning it burns fewer calories a session.

To jump start your fat burning systems, however, alternate bouts of very hard work with periods of less intensity. The journal "Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism" published a study in December 2008 showing that three sessions of interval training per week helped increase fat oxidation in previously untrained individuals in just six weeks. Try going as fast as you can for four minutes and then perform light activity for two minutes. Repeat 10 times for an hour-long session.