Gym Workouts To Lose Weight

Exercise is important for long-term weight loss for a number of reasons. First, exercise burns calories. Second, the right kind of exercise can alter your body composition in a way that encourages sustained weight loss. Finally, regular exercise can encourage you to respect your body and cause you to become more health conscious.

The Weight Loss Equation

You need to burn at least 3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat, according to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. If you are 50 lbs. overweight and plan to lose the extra weight solely through exercise, you will need to burn at least 175,000 calories in the gym. Since even intense aerobic exercise burns only a few hundred calories per hour, depending on your body weight, it takes a long time to lose significant weight solely through aerobic exercise. However, you can combine aerobic exercise with strength training to maximize the calories your body burns inside and outside the gym.

Body Composition

Most of your body weight is made up of muscle, fat and bones. Healthy males have 10 to 25 percent body fat, while healthy females have 18 to 30 percent body fat, according to the University of New Mexico. By burning fat and building muscle through strength training, you can reduce the size of your waist and hips and increase the size of the more muscular areas of your body, making you look and feel better even if you don't lose weight. If you combine exercise with proper eating habits, you can lose fat faster than you gain muscle. If your goal is simply to look and feel better, body composition is a better measure of success than body weight.

Aerobics Workout

Any exercise is considered aerobic if it raises your heartbeat to between 60 to 80 percent of its maximum capacity. You can estimate your maximum heartbeat by subtracting your age from 220. Commercial treadmills often include equipment that will allow you to monitor your heart rate. If you don't have access to heart rate monitoring equipment, exercise hard enough to be able to hold a conversation only by stopping to catch your breath now and then. The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports recommends an aerobics workout lasting 20 to 40 minutes at least three times a week, if your physical condition permits.

Strength Training Workout

Strength training builds muscle, which in turn raises your resting metabolism, causing your body to have to work harder and burn more calories to maintain your new muscles. This means that you can literally lose weight while you sleep. Women need not fear "bulking up" to unattractive proportions absent a professional bodybuilding program. MayoClinic.com recommends strength training for 20 to 30 minutes, two or three times a week. Start with weights you can lift eight to 12 times for each exercise, and increase the weight as soon as you can lift it 13 or more times without stopping.

Spot Reduction

Spot reduction refers to the reduction of fat around a specific body part by exercising that body part -- doing sit-ups, for example, to reduce belly fat. However, spot reduction doesn't work, asserts the American Council on Exercise. This is because when you exercise, you are exercising the underlying muscle, not the fat that covers it. Doing 100 calories worth of sit-ups won't reduce belly fat any more than doing 100 calories worth of aerobic dancing -- or skipping a 100-calorie snack.