If you're trying to lose weight, exercise is an almost inevitable part of the process. But just blindly stepping on the treadmill and hoping to see the pounds come off probably won't work over the long term. Understanding the relationship between exercise and weight loss -- including how to most effectively work out -- is the key to not wasting your time in the gym.
How Exercise Helps With Weight Loss
Losing weight is all about calories -- calories burned vs. the calories you eat. To consistently lose weight, you must eat fewer calories than you burn on a daily basis. Everyone's body burns a certain amount of calories just through your daily routine -- walking around, brushing your teeth, even while sitting. The key to weight loss is burning enough calories every day to compensate for the amount of food you eat. That's where exercise comes in. As you exercise, you burn excess calories above and beyond your basal metabolic rate to help create a calorie deficit. The greater the daily calorie deficit, the more weight you will lose.
Types of Exercise
Cardiovascular exercise is the most effective and efficient way to burn calories and get rid of fat. This type of exercise includes any type of activity that elevates your heart rate over an extended period of time. Weight-training or resistance exercise, on the other hand, involves strengthening and stretching the muscles in your body. While resistance and weight-training exercises generally burn fewer calories per hour, they are effective for helping guard against the loss of lean muscle tissue as you perform cardiovascular exercise.
Target Heart Rate
One of the best ways to make sure you're exercising the most effectively when doing cardio is by focusing on your target heart rate, according to the American Heart Association. Your target heart rate is a range between 50 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. To figure out your maximum heart rate, take your age and subtract it from the number 220. Wear a heart rate monitor or stop to check your pulse periodically while you work out to make sure you're staying within your target heart rate zone.
Tips and Considerations
To make exercise work for weight loss, you've got to do it on a consistent basis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week, along with two days of weight-training or strengthening exercises on nonconsecutive days. Choose forms of exercises you know you'll enjoy, such as sport or recreational activities like rollerblading that get your heart rate up. This will make it more likely that you'll want to exercise on a regular basis.
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