Unfortunately, just going to the gym isn’t enough to lose weight; you need to make regular, appropriate use of the gym equipment too. Diet is an important factor in weight control, too; if you’re still taking in more calories than you burn, you’ll continue to gain weight, no matter how much you work out. Once you’re working out for the proper duration at the proper intensity and have your diet under control, the weight will almost always come right off.
Medical Concerns
Always consult a physician before beginning a new exercise program, so if you didn’t do this when you first started going to the gym, do it now. Your doctor will be able to identify which exercises will benefit you the most, and whether there are any you should avoid or modify. If you continue to gain weight even after learning how to exercise properly and monitoring your diet, your doctor may be able to help you identify any underlying hormonal problems, illnesses or medication side effects that are hampering your weight loss.
Duration
Expert recommendations for maintaining physical fitness average out to 15 to 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise most days of the week, plus strength training. But to lose weight, you need to work out for longer--often averaging 60 to 90 minutes of cardiovascular exercise every day. If you’re not spending that much time exercising in the gym--as opposed to in the locker room, sauna or stretching--then you’re probably not going to meet your weight loss goals, either.
Intensity
When you first start an exercise problem, you should begin slowly to give your body a chance to adjust, then gradually increase workout intensity as you progress. The harder you exercise the more calories you burn, so maintaining a moderate- to vigorous-intensity pace will yield better weight-loss results than a low-intensity workout of the same duration. Clues that you’re exercising at a moderate intensity include breaking a sweat and being slightly out of breath, but not so winded that you can’t carry on a normal conversation. If you’re more out of breath but can still get a few words out at a time, you’re probably exercising at a vigorous intensity.
Diet and Caloric Deficit
To lose weight, you must establish a caloric deficit. Keep a food diary every day, tracking how many calories you eat and drink. Then estimate your basal metabolic rate as 10 calories per pound of body weight if you’re a woman, or 11 calories per pound if you’re a man, as recommended by Liz Applegate, Ph.D., FACSM, director of sports nutrition at the University of California at Davis, in an American College of Sports Medicine press release. Keep track of how many calories you burn while exercising on a given day, and add this number to your basal metabolic rate; the result is your total calorie burn. Subtract the number of calories you consumed that day from your total calorie burn. If there’s a positive number left over, congratulations--that’s your caloric deficit for the day, and when the cumulative deficit reaches about 3,500, you’ll have burned the equivalent of a pound of body fat.
