Finding the right weight loss workout plan for you can be challenging. Whether you are a beginner, man, women, at home exerciser or gym enthousiast.
However, there are some things everyone needs to consider, no matter how far you are in your weight loss journey.
Weight loss workout plan for beginners
Finding out a weight loss workout plan for yourself the first time can be an overwhelming experience. Not only are there so many exercises to choose from, you have probably heard different things from all around you.
“Do high intensity interval training“, “You have to do cardio at your weight loss heart rate“, and so on. Before you think about any of those things there are some questions you need to ask yourself.
What workouts do you actually like doing?
You won’t burn any fat if you are not doing the exercise you’ve planned. Chances are, you won’t do the planned exercises consistently if you don’t like doing it. You might be able to go a few weeks on willpower but if you absolutely hate doing it, it’s likely you won’t keep it up.
Find a type of exercise you love doing. Or the second option make workouts more fun by doing it with a friend or listening to some music while you are burning the calories.
What is your budget for your physical activities?
It might not be the first thing you think about when first deciding on what exercise to do. However, it’s important. Life will go on while you are working on that dream body.
Exercise costs can vary from nothing if you go for a walk with some old shoes to about $1500 if you’re planning on taking 10 polo lessons. Jokes apart, do keep in mind to think ahead on how your new workout plan will fit into your budget.
How much time do you have to exercise?
This one you did probably think about already. If you have 30 minutes to exercise and it’s 10 minutes to the gym you might want to keep it to workout plans to do at home.
If you think you will be short on time try to find something more intensive. These kinds of exercises will often be more time-efficient.
What are the best weight loss workout exercises?
Again, it’s more important to figure out a workout plan you will stick to than figuring out the most optimal fat burning exercises you won’t do consistently.
With that being said, some exercises burn more calories than others. Let’s dive in the three main exercise categories.
Cardio workouts at home or at the gym
The first main exercise category is cardio. For the people who are scratching their head trying to figure out what cardio is, here is a small list of cardio workouts.
Running, swimming, jumping rope, dancing, most ball sports, cycling, boxing, rowing and so on.
Basically movements at a low intensity, most of the time for a slightly longer duration.
Cardio workouts are what most people think they have to do in order to lose weight. Cardio does burn more calories than for example weight lifting if we’re only measuring the time DURING the exercise.
But after you’re done exercising? No more calorie burning…
High intensity interval training workouts
Or HIIT for short, are pretty much cardio exercises done with a higher intensity. This means that you can do all previously mentioned exercises in a more intensive way.
HIIT burns more calories from moment to moment than cardio but it might be harder to keep up for the same amount of time. This means that when we look at a cardio workout vs a HIIT workout the cardio workout might burn more calories if you do it for longer.
BUT in contrast to cardio, you do get some calorie burning even after your high intensity workout session. Due to the more extreme movement you will most likely build more muscle than by doing cardio.
Muscle building workouts
Muscle building workouts can vary from doing body weight exercises at home to lifting weights at the gym.
The purpose of this kind of exercise is ultimately to build muscle. During your muscle training you might not sweat. And for that reason people underestimate how much building muscle can help with their weight loss.
Muscle helps calorie burning a lot in the long term. There are people who try to build as much muscle as possible to be able to lift the heaviest weights on the planet. They are called “strong men”
Some of these guys burn up to 12.500 calories a day. 12.500. This fun fact is to make sure you understand how much building muscle can mean to you if you’re trying to lose weight.
Muscle training might not burn a lot of calories from moment to moment but in the long term it can really do some work.
What’s the best kind of exercise for my weight loss workout plan?
So with that being said.
It depends.
If you want to burn calories the coming hour, you probably want to do cardio or HIIT. If you want to burn the most calories today, you probably want to do HIIT. Now if you want to burn calories long-term, building muscle is the thing for you.
Build muscle to the point you are comfortable with how you look. If you want, you can do some cardio or HIIT to push through the last pounds.
