Derek Burnett
Derek Burnett is a Contributing Writer at Bottom Line Personal, where he writes frequently on health and wellness. He is also a contributing editor with Reader’s Digest magazine.
When you make a commitment to lose weight, you’d do well to forge a two-pronged plan…changing your diet to improve the quality and quantity of the calories you’re consuming and exercising to burn fat and boost metabolism. But which exercise is going to give you the best bang for your buck? Which will help you most quickly lose the most weight? Which is the best exercise to lose weight at home?
To optimize your exercise routine, it’s good to have a realistic sense about the effectiveness and role of physical activity in a weight-loss program. There’s no question that people are more successful at losing weight when they combine diet with an exercise routine. But the benefits of exercise might be different than you think.
Calorie-burning. Yes, you burn calories when you move your body. But, while this aspect of exercise is often thought of as its primary weight-loss benefit, you might be surprised to learn how few calories you actually go through per session. For example, in an hour of walking, you might burn 250 calories. All else remaining the same, that’s a nice caloric deficit for the day…but exercise stimulates the appetite, so you might want to have a bigger portion at your next meal, or you might be inclined to treat yourself. Just two Oreo cookies contain 140 calories, instantly shrinking your deficit to 110 calories. Working off calories is a legitimate concept, just a bit less surefire than many people think.
Metabolism-boosting. Physical movement increases your metabolism, which is hugely important for weight loss, especially since your metabolism naturally slows once you start to shed pounds because your body is concerned you may be under stress and threat of starvation. Keeping up your activity level can help stave off that natural decline in metabolism. The metabolic benefits of exercise last for hours after your session—up to 14 hours in one study of young men.
Mood-improving. Study after study shows that exercise improves people’s outlook, reduces depression and anxiety, and generally makes them feel better about the world. What does that have to do with weight loss? For one thing, you’re less likely to reach for comfort food because you’re feeling down. But importantly, you’re also more likely to feel motivated. You really feel like you’re making progress once you’re locked into a healthy eating pattern coupled with an exercise routine. The two practices feed off each other, and the way you feel when you’re “in the zone” is a reward unto itself.
Despite all of these benefits, experts largely agree that diet trumps exercise when it comes to weight loss. Bodybuilders are fond of saying, “Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym.” In other words, what you eat has a bigger impact on the amount of fat you carry than which exercises you perform. By no means does that suggest that you should only focus on diet and forego exercise, since both are always better. But when you’re starting on your weight-loss journey, it’s good to be clear-eyed about the relationship between the two. It will help you avoid mistakes like saying, “I exercised so much this morning that I can have two brownies for dessert without worrying about gaining weight,” or, “I’ve been working out so much lately that I can eat whatever I want and still lose weight.”
There’s a world of exercises out there, some more intense than others, some higher impact than others. And the exercise that’s the very best to help you lose weight is…the one you enjoy doing. That might sound like a cop-out, but it’s really the answer. If you hate running, you might be able to force yourself to get to the gym and pound out 30 minutes on the treadmill. You might even do it for two weeks or a month. But you’re probably not going to do it for the rest of your life. To achieve sustainable weight loss, you need a sustainable plan. The changes you make to what you eat should not feel like a temporary “diet” but rather a permanent lifestyle change, and the same goes for exercising. So find something you’re going to keep doing, whether it’s walking daily at your local beach or park, taking an early-morning swim at your YMCA pool, playing tennis with your best friend, or cycling with your spouse.
You will often see the advice that any form of physical activity is effective, whether that’s working in your garden, dancing, or doing housework. While it’s certainly true that any movement is a net benefit, when you’re trying to lose weight it’s important to be honest with yourself about whether you can truly get enough exercise through such means. Yes, you do your own gardening, but do you do it every day? How often do you really go dancing? Make sure you find an activity that you will do regularly, as part of an established routine. General guidelines are to get 1.5 to 2.5 hours of moderate-intensity activity each week. For weight loss, strive for 2.5 hours or more.
As you’re contemplating which exercise to take up, keep these three thoughts in mind:
Strength training matters. Don’t focus exclusively on aerobic exercise. If all you do is restrict calories and do cardio, you’ll be burning calories from muscle, not fat. Adding in two days of strength training each week, such as lifting weights or performing body-weight exercises, will ensure that you’re burning calories from fat.
HIIT is king. High-intensity interval training is a form of aerobic exercise in which, instead of keeping up the same steady pace for the duration of your workout, you alternate during your workout between short periods of high-intensity work and longer periods at lower intensity. HIIT burns more calories than regular cardio and helps you passively burn fat for up to a day afterward. HIIT can be done in many ways…running on a treadmill, riding a bicycle, swimming, running a track, or jumping rope, for example. And it’s naturally built into some sports such as tennis and racquetball…even Zumba and other cardio classes.
Variety wins. The more types of movement you perform, the better off you’ll be. Instead of seeking one single “best” exercise, look for a grab-bag of things you enjoy that will work different muscle groups, challenge you at different intensities, and help with often-neglected aspects of fitness such as balance and flexibility.
