No weight loss workout is truly easy, but incorporating fun exercises into your daily routine makes the process less daunting. Choose enjoyable activities that get your heart pumping to promote weight loss. Add a weight training component to your workout to improve muscle tone and make your body look slimmer.
Weight Loss Guidelines
To effectively lose weight and keep it off, you must burn more calories than you consume each day. A calorie calculator estimates your daily caloric requirements using your age, sex, weight, height and physical activity level. Subtracting 1,000 calories each day from this estimate may help you to lose 2 lbs. per week. Create this 1,000-calorie deficit by changing your diet and exercising more frequently.
Aerobic Exercise
Perform 30 to 45 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity on at least five days per week. Aerobic exercise should increase your heart rate and cause you to sweat. Use a target heart rate calculator to determine how intensely you should exercise to efficiently burn fat. Choose fun activities, such as dancing, gardening, yard work, swimming or cycling to prevent your workout from getting dull. Vary your workout from day to day to challenge your body and keep yourself on track. If sustaining exercise for 30 minutes is too difficult, break your workout into 10-minute segments.
Weight Training
Perform weight training exercises at least two times per week to build lean muscle and tone your body. Bicep curls, triceps extensions, shoulder press, lateral raises, seated row, bench press and lat pulldowns work your upper body and tone your shoulders, chest and arms. To sculpt your legs and buttocks, perform hamstring curls, squats, calf raises, quadriceps extensions and lunges. MayoClinic.com recommends that you select weights heavy enough to tire your muscles after a single set of 12 repetitions. Remember to warm up with five minutes of aerobic exercise and to stretch thoroughly before weight training.
Considerations
Beginning a weight loss program does not require a gym membership or fancy equipment. If you do not have access to professional weightlifting equipment, invest in dumbbells or use heavy cans to perform weight training exercises. Alternatively, use your body weight to perform push-ups, squats, abdominal crunches, lunges and bridges. These exercises work multiple muscle groups to sculpt a leaner physique.
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