The key to losing weight quickly is to not settle into a single workout routine, but to continually challenge your body with variations of speed, duration and difficulty. This pushes your body to burn calories fast, and helps build muscle by continuously requiring new adaptation. Treadmills and elliptical trainers are both good machines for fast weight loss because they offer a variety of programs and settings that will help keep you working hard and burning fat fast.
Elliptical Fat Burning
Elliptical trainer manufacturer Precor recommends a fat-burning program that works all the major muscles in your legs including your calves, thighs and buttocks, to train your muscles to burn fat. Start at a low incline, warm up, then train for about 15 minutes at 65 to 75 percent of your maximum heart rate, and cool down for two to three minutes. As you build endurance increase your workouts to 45 to 60 minutes, and vary the resistance so you have short bursts of high-intensity effort.
Elliptical Manual Settings
Preset programs are a good starting point, but if you want to lose weight fast you can achieve more by using manual settings, according to celebrity personal trainer Derek Noble’s book “The Body Noble.” He recommends using the manual settings because they give you the freedom to create more variety and challenge. Also, machines are typically designed for an “average” weight user — often around 160 lbs. If you are heavier, you may need to use increased resistance and incline to get a sufficiently challenging workout.
Treadmill Endurance
Treadmills can help you lose weight by activating your body’s fat burning potential, and running on on a treadmill can be just as effective as training outdoors, according to “Running and Fatburning for Women.” The simplest way to begin is to use your treadmill’s preset fat-burning program. However, you should try to increase your distance with every workout, rather than getting comfortable with one program. The longer you run for, the more calories you burn and the faster you lose weight.
Treadmill Intervals
“Fat Burning: Exercise & Diet” notes that doing at least one speed- or interval-training session a week can help you lose weight faster because it increases the total distance covered, and therefore the amount of calories burned. Mix interval training days in with steady running days to avoid overtraining your body. For example, on alternate days run two minutes at an easy pace followed by a one minute sprint, then two minutes easy, and repeat five times, gradually increasing the speed and/or number of intervals as you get more fit.
References
- Precor: “Beginner Level Fat Burning and Aerobic Base 1 Building - Elliptical Trainer”; 2010
- “The Body Noble: 20 Minutes to a Hot Body with Hollywood's Coolest Trainer”; Derek Noble; 2005
- “Running & Fatburning for Women”; Jeff & Barbara Galloway; 2008
- “Fat Burning: Exercise & Diet”; Johannes Roschinsky; 2004
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