Exercises for Losing Weight

Some exercises for losing weight are better than others. For example, the ever-present abdominal crunch is a good exercise for general health and posture, but it doesn't really do much for burning body fat covering the abs. Meanwhile a classic squat or deadlift, can have a surprisingly good effect on your weight loss effort. How come? Let's take a closer look at the underlying mechanics in this article.

An abdominal crunch is a fairly isolated movement, just like bicep curls or calf presses they only utilize a small percentage of the total body musculature. This is great for the muscle being trained, but you don't really get the kind of systemic effort required for a squat. The squat, by contrast, involves legs, hips, back and even some shoulders, abs and other supporting musculature. Or to put it simply: You don't get out of breath from bicep curls, whereas squats are much more taxing and have you gasping for air or at least breathing heavily after a good set.

This in turn has an impact on your metabolism and natural hormone balance. The body responds to the demands put upon it, and by putting this heavy load on your body, it responds by releasing more natural growth hormone as you sleep. Strength and muscle growth occurs, which is just what you need since this increases the around-the-clock metabolism in the long haul. There's also a short-term hike in metabolism about 24 hours after the weight training; think of it as a bonus.

Of course, practically all effective weight loss exercise programs have some elements of cardiovascular training in them. Cardio is always good for your health, but the more immediate impact we're looking for here are the fat-burning properties.

Many people prefer relatively low-intensity training, like jogging or swimming. This means keeping the heart rate at about 70% of max, or just about where you're sweating while huffing and puffing, but not having side stitches and black spots dancing before your eyes. Keeping this up for an hour or so is a perfectly respectable way to burn off a couple hundred calories, and in many cases it is the best and safest option.

If you're in decent shape and don't have any medical conditions or other reasons to play it safe, you may be interested in interval training instead. This is a more intense version of cardio that incorporates anaerobic elements, i.e. a limited form of strength training baked into the cardio.

Interval training simply means that you alternate between the regular cardio and sudden bursts of all-out sprints. So a jogger may do the usual 70%-of-max-heart-rate pace for three minutes, then do 30 seconds of max speed running, then return to three minutes of regular jogging while catching one's breath, then another sprint, and so on.

These "spikes" will hike your overall calorie burn considerably and jolt your metabolism, just like the compound weight exercises discussed earlier work on a systemic level. You may not have the juice to go on for as long as you would doing a leisurely jog (in this example) but if you were to calculate the total number of calories burned from 45 minutes of interval training vs. 60 minutes of regular, low-intensity jogging, you're almost certain to come out ahead. Plus, you've given your stamina a significant boost.

So, how would you approach a weekly program using these components? Suppose you're a generally healthy 30-something looking to get serious; you're ready to train Monday through Friday after work; weekends are for rest and relaxation.

• Monday: Weight training - Upper body
• Tuesday: 45 minutes jogging, interval training
• Wednesday: Weight training - Legs
• Thursday: 60 minutes swimming, regular low-intensity
• Friday: 45 minutes jogging, interval training
• Saturday: Rest
• Sunday: Rest

Of course, if you enjoy playing tennis or take spinning classes for cardio, or prefer to do a more classic circuit training program for weight training, there's nothing wrong with that. When it comes to exercises for losing weight, there are few wrong answers, only quicker and slower methods. The sample schedule above should bring relatively quick results, but as always, the most important thing is to do something and stick to the program. Good luck!.

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