Exercises For Trimming Down

Losing weight, or trimming down, is one advantage of exercising. The exercises you choose to trim down should also improve your fitness. You need to burn at least 2,000 calories per week via continuous exercises that are known as aerobic exercises to improve your fitness, according to "How to Exercise," a chapter in "Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease." Ornish recommends aerobic dancing, cross-country skiing, running, swimming, tennis as among the best weight-loss exercises.

Dancing

You can burn 2,000 calories by aerobic dancing for 40 minutes five days per week depending on your weight, wrote Ornish. The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library also recommends aerobic dancing and reports that dancing while exercising with weights can improve your fitness and strength. Aerobic, ballet, modern and twist dancing for an hour burns 518 calories if you weigh 190 lbs., 422 calories if you weigh 155 lbs. and 354 calories if you weigh 130 lbs., according to a Wisconsin study. Fast and slow ballroom dancing burn 387 and 211 calories per hour, respectively if you weigh 155 lbs.

Skiing

Cross-country skiing burns 2,000 calories if you ski 30 minutes six days weekly, wrote Ornish. The sport ranks behind only fast running and bicycling on Wisconsin's study of 175 exercises. Cross-country skiing uphill burns 1,423 calories per hour if you weigh 190 lbs. The same 190-lb. person will burn 690 calories cross-country skiing with a moderate effort and 518 calories skiing downhill with a moderate effort. You're skiing moderately if your heart rate is between 55 percent and 69 percent of your maximum heart rate, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. Your MHR is 220 heartbeats each minute minus your age.

Running

Running 3 miles at a 10-minute per mile pace six days a week burns 2,000 calories, wrote Ornish. Studies by Wisconsin and the Harvard Heart Letter have comparable figures. Both studies rank fast running as the No. 1 weight-loss exercise. Running 10 mph, a 6-minute per mile pace, for an hour will burn 1,228 calories if you weigh 155 lbs., while running 6 mph, a 10-minute per mile pace, will burn 744, according to the Heart Letter.

Swimming

Swimming for 30 minutes six days weekly burns 2,000 calories, wrote Ornish. The sport is also beneficial because it "exercises the whole body --the legs, arms and back - -without straining the joints and muscles," according to Merck Manuals' "Choosing the Right Exercise" report. Swimming the crawl and the butterfly burn roughly 80 more calories than the breaststroke and 220 more calories than the backstroke, according to the Harvard Heart Letter. The crawl and butterfly burn 818 calories per hour in 155-lb. people.

Tennis

Playing singles tennis for one hour five days per week burns 2,000 calories, wrote Ornish. The Harvard Heart Letter lists tennis as one of the best weight-loss exercises that requires more than one person. The sport burns 520 calories per hour if you weigh 155 lbs., while golf using a cart burns 260 calories per hour.