Working out at a gym is often beneficial to losing weight, but it isn't a necessity. You can just as easily lose weight without having access to a gym as you can by hitting the treadmill, elliptical trainer or other machines at your local fitness center. As long as you're able to burn more calories than you consume each day, you're going to lose weight. Consult your doctor before beginning any new exercise or diet regimen.
Weight Loss
According to Dr. Donald Hensrud, a preventive medicine specialist with the Mayo Clinic, eating fewer calories each day can provide better weight-loss results than an increase in physical activity, so that gym membership you're considering may not be as valuable as you think. This doesn't suggest you shouldn't exercise, just that caloric restriction is much more effective in helping you shed those excess pounds. The reason for this partly revolves around the amount of exercise needed to create a caloric deficit.
Exercise
When you exercise, you expend more energy than normal, which causes you to burn additional calories. Burning additional calories can help create a caloric deficit. But the number of calories you're burning is based on the intensity level of the athletic pursuit and your weight. For example, walking at 2 miles per hour for 30 minutes on a treadmill only burns around 90 calories in a 160-pound individual, the Mayo Clinic calculates. Since a pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories, it would take you more than 38 days exercising at this pace for 30 minutes daily to generate the deficit needed to lose 1 lb. of weight. Increasing the intensity of your walk to 3.5 mph intensifies your calorie burn to around 138 calories per half-hour --- but that would still only burn off 1 lb. every 25 days.
At Home
The other half of the equation with your access to a gym involves at-home exercise. Many of the activities you engage in at the gym can also be done in and around your own home. Taking a walk around the block can easily be a substitute for a treadmill, while heading up and down the stairs is a great alternative for using a stair-climbing machine. You can even fill laundry jugs with water or sand to replace dumbbells.
Recommendation
If you're really serious about losing the weight, your best option is a combination of diet and exercise. By reducing portion sizes while incorporating healthier food choices into your diet, you can often generate the caloric deficit needed to lose weight. Just eliminating a single can of sugar-sweetened soda from your diet each day saves you 150 calories. Combining this with an increase in physical activity can help you lose the weight and keep it off.
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