How Much Weight Can You Lose By Playing Zumba Fitness?

Zumba Fitness offers a potentially winning option for weight loss as you dance to a playlist of Latin and other international rhythms. Its workout consists of attending a class or playing a DVD for 45 to 60 minutes, with bouncy warm-ups of 5 to 10 minutes, a series of high-intensity dances and 5 to 10 minutes of cool-downs. Zumba Fitness can lead to significant weight loss when practiced two to three times a week and combined with a nutritious diet and strength training.

Significance

In his book “Zumba: Ditch the Workout Join the Party! The Zumba Weight Loss Program,” Zumba Fitness founder Beto Perez described the spread of his dance fitness program after he came up with the concept in Colombia in the early 1990s. He forgot his regular aerobic class cassettes and on the spot used his favorite Latin tunes to improvise a new class based on his love of Latin dancing. Perez brought Zumba Fitness to Miami in the mid-1990s.

Process

Without fully realizing it, Perez had stumbled on a means of burning 600 to 1,000 calories an hour. Depending on how hard you dance at class, be it delicate, energetic or so hyped up you sweat profusely, you experience higher or lower calorie burns. If you try Zumba Fitness as a way of addressing a relatively sedentary lifestyle, your activity level may get a significant boost. Further, the more fun you find a weight-loss activity, the more likely you are to stick with it and enjoy its benefits, MayoClinic.com physician and physical medicine specialist Edward R. Laskowski observes.

Calorie Burn

In addition, Zumba Fitness’s combinations of mid-tempo beats along with nonstop upbeat numbers allow you to briefly recover and to dance vigorously for the next choreographed song. These mixed levels of exertion make Zumba Fitness a form of interval training. This form of exercise allows you to exert more energy at a high level than if you attempted to stay close to your heart-rate maximum steadily. Perez states that fat loss is greater with Zumba Fitness than with moderate but steady forms of exercising, such as walking on a treadmill for 45 minutes. MayoClinic.com agrees, noting that interval training burns more calories, slays boredom and improves your aerobic capacity.

Application

If you combine Zumba Fitness with dietary changes toward nutritious foods such as lean protein sources, whole grains, complex carbohydrates and modest amounts of unsaturated fats, you can lose weight. Perez recommends picking a specific weight goal where you look and feel your best, ideally based on a table of healthy weight ranges for your height. Track your progress with a weekly weigh-in and log the result, as well as measuring and recording your body circumference inches for waist, thighs and hips. Add in strength training and cross-training with other forms of cardio for a balanced approach to boosting your metabolism, he writes.