What is the best way to train at the gym for weight loss purposes?

Question

I joined a gym 2 months ago, and have exercised almost daily.

In the first 2-3 weeks I went to the gym almost daily exercising for about 45 mins (treadmill, weights etc) but I realised this was not sustainable because I was really exhausted. Also the treadmill hurts my knees. So now I'm working out at the gym 6 times a week with one rest day. However, I am not sure if this is the best way to work out, because after about 2 months, I only lost 4 kg. My target is to lose 10kg.

Typically, my gym session is 15 mins on the Crossover machine (http://www.technogym.com/gb/products/cardiovascular-training/ellipticals/excite-+/crossover/3765) on the level 5-6 difficulty (out of 25). This is what I think is the "medium" intensity as I sweat quite a lot. Then after that I either do 20 minutes of weights or 15 minutes on the rowing machine (for 2km).

Is this the right approach to lose weight? Should I do more or less cardio / weight lifting? Also, would increasing the workouts to twice a day be better? (30 minutes for each?) I'm female, in my 20s. Any tips on how to structure my workouts?

Answer 1

The goal here is not weight loss. You can lose weight by chopping an arm off or donating a kidney. What you want is to be healthier, look better, and lose fat. The term for this is body recomposition, that is, changing out body to be composed of more muscle and less fat.

You can't out-gym a bad diet

"You can't outrun a bad diet", the old saying goes, which means that almost no amount of exercise can help someone who eats lots of bad food. As Dr. Yoni Freedhoff puts it:

Exercise is the world's best drug - it's just not a weight loss drug.

That said, some few people find success from a total lifestyle change that includes exercise--usually lots of exercise--plus a total change in diet. The specifics on the exercise side don't seem to matter a whole lot: some people just run, some people just lift weights, some people run and lift. Consistency over time on the exercise is the important part, but again, pinning your hopes on workouts getting rid of body fat is going to be disappointing.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't hit the gym, it just means that the gym isn't what's going to cause tremendous fat loss. It can still help you with body recomposition and a whole lot more:

My exercise mantra remains the same. Some is good. More is better. Everything counts. And the good news too is that lesser amounts of exercise, while unlikely to have a dramatic impact upon your weight, may well have a dramatic impact upon your health, mood, sleep, and quality of life, all the while preserving your functional independence as you age.

Diet first

The most important exercise for losing fat is to make sure your diet is in order. Most everyone can agree on the fundamentals: minimize or eliminate soda, sugary processed snacks and desserts, highly processed breaded and fried fast food, and so on. Consider that some specific food groups--such as dairy, bread, or carbs--give some people more digestive trouble than others. Pay attention to your body when you eat specific foods and test to see whether you do better trading one food group for another.

Don't starve yourself and don't restrict any macronutrient unless you're sure you know what you're doing. Your body needs protein, and fat, and if you're working out it definitely needs carbohydrate. Eat quality foods, lots of vegetables, lots of protein, no junk.

Rest

You'll also want to make sure to get plenty of sleep and have a manageable amount of stress. Losing fat is a lot harder when you're stressed or underslept. Getting enough sleep helps with recovery, and goes a long way to preparing a person for more frequent exercise.

Exercise for body recomposition

So, we know that exercise isn't a weight loss drug, but that it can help build muscle and help us feel better and be able to do more things. How should we then work out?

• Strength train at least a little bit, to increase your metabolism and make you more capable of harder conditioning workouts. Once a week is fine, though two or three will work too. Barbells, kettlebells, and dumbbells are all fine. Start light but focus on adding weight as frequently as you can. Squats, deadlifts, bench and overhead presses, push-ups, body rows, dumbbell/barbell/kettlebell rows, Turkish get-ups, and lunges are all fine exercises.
• At the end of those workouts, or as a separate workouts, do high-intensity conditioning to get in a lot of work. Five to twenty minutes of hard conditioning, two to four times a week is reasonable. This could mean sprints, kettlebell swings, dumbbell clean-and-jerks, burpees, bodyweight intervals, or a whole host of other exercises. CrossFit workouts are usually designed with this model, as are the conditioning portion of the Max Effort Black Box program. The point is to stay at a high intensity for a relatively short period of time, which will burn plenty of calories. Your workout can be something like "as many reps as possible in five minutes", or "sprint for one minute, then walk for three, then repeat five times", or "five squats with the dumbbell, then five presses, then run across the room, do ten push-ups, bear-crawl back, and repeat the whole thing as many times as I can in twenty minutes".
• If you still have energy after that, one or two medium-to-long sessions of running, swimming, or biking are fine. They go in a separate workout. They are less efficient per minute than high-intensity conditioning, but are a straightforward way to get a large volume of work into your weekly schedule.

This will take a tremendous amount of work, but will make you more able to do things.

Answer 2

You already have good answers so I’ll just add a few extra points:

I only lost 4 kg. My target is to lose 10kg.

• Body Fat Percentage - Tracking your weight is not necessarily the best guideline to judge your progress. Tracking your body fat percentage and waist measurements may give you better feedback and motivation.

  Because I am assuming that your goal is to lose fat and not muscle, tracking your body fat percentage gives you better information about how your body composition is changing, so that you can determine if your exercise and diet program is on track. Since you are lifting weights, your percent of lean muscle mass is most likely improving. This would not be reflected as a loss of weight on the scales.

Is this the right approach to lose weight?

• Diet - As others have already mentioned, the most effective way to lose weight is to improve your diet and nutrition. Portion size, balanced nutrition, frequency of meals, hydrating and avoiding empty calories like sugars and sugar substitutes are all things to consider when planning your diet. Exercise is important, but diet is key.

  Exercise - Others have covered the ideas of resistance training for muscle strengthening, cardio for endurance training and HIIT (when you are able) to burn more calories in a shorter amount of time. Each have their benefits, so the fact that you are doing both cardio and weight training is helpful for your goals. As others have pointed out you don't need to do weight training everyday and you do need to give yourself recovery time. (See signs of overtraining below.) Circuit training, cross training, body weight exercises, resistance bands are all valid ways to help you meet your goals.

  You didn't mention any flexibility exercises, so you may want to add some stretching and/or foam rolling after your workouts to maintain your flexibility. (These don't help with weight loss but they do help to keep your body in good shape so that you can continue exercising over the long run.)

Also the treadmill hurts my knees.

• The elliptical is a good alternative to the treadmill given you have knee problems. At some point it may be worth having your knees checked out to find out why you have knee pain. A sports medicine doctor or physical therapist could evaluate your alignment, feet, footwear, weaknesses and any myofascial restrictions that may be contributing to knee pain. Correcting the problem(s) may help to keep you exercising and prevent overuse type symptoms.

I was really exhausted.

• Watch for signs of over-training. Balancing your workouts with sufficient rest will help to keep you from burning out so that you can keep up your workouts for a lifetime. What are some signs of overtraining?

Last but not least - Congratulations on such a good start.

Answer 3

Lightbulb,

Moses already mentioned about dieting, and Moses is right. I don't know much about your diet, but I can tell you that the truth about sustainable weight loss has a lot to do with proper eating and little to do with exercising. This works for all normal individuals (no hormonal imbalances).

With this being said, I don't think you should worry about whether you should lift weights or doing cardio to lose weight. The truth is that if you decide to lift weights, and you burn more calories then you consume, and if you continue to do so, then you will lose weight. You may even get more toned and more muscle definition. Look at the women gymnasts and cheerleaders. They use their own bodyweight as resistance.

On the other end, if you run 2 hours per day, but you consume more calories than you burn, then you will gain weight. This is true with many people in the gym on the treadmills and the ellipticals. It's really all about calories in and calories out.

It sounds like you are working out at a moderate intensity (sweat a lot), so I won't change much. Just make sure your diet is good and clean. Here is what I always tell my patients and clients!

Tips and tricks for successful and sustainable weight loss:

Eat healthier foods throughout the day to include meals and snacks. Try to eat every 2-3 hours (including snacks) to keep your metabolism running high, thus resulting in burning more calories.

Consume the least amount of sugar as possible. Foods like milk, juices, sodas and sweet snacks have lots of sugar, which will slow down your metabolism, thus will not be effective for burning calories. Be sure to read the label before purchasing or consuming.

Drink plenty of water so that you will feel full throughout the day (12-16 glasses per day). If you do eat late (after 7 PM), try to eat good calories like vegetables and lean proteins. If not, make sure to exercise extra to burn those calories the same night.

Yes! Exercise, but try resistance training. You do not have to use actual weights, but rather mostly your body weight to get results (look at the gymnasts). Plus, resistance training has been shown to boost your metabolism. Remember the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn throughout the day.

If you start a habit by eating healthier, most likely you will sustain the results because it is so natural to eat, and not so natural to exercise and sweat.

I hope this has been helpful!

Answer 4

LightBulb,

While there are many excellent ideas to think about in the responses on this thread, already, I would like to register my opinion that there is no "one-size-fits-all" regimen, or type of work-out, that's "best" for people of all ages, all physical conditions, all body-types (by "body-type" I mean such genetic factors as metabolism, and your tendency to have a "natural" gene determined optimal weight).

Also, your long-term, and recent, exercise history comes into play here: it's one thing to be re-starting to exercise after a long period of not exercising; quite another to be very obese and just starting to exercise; another "universe" entirely to be over sixty, and start weight-lifting.

Without knowing the details of your age, your current physical condition, your history of exercise, and more information about your diet, metabolism, sleep habits, use or non-use of stimulants, tobacco, alcohol, etc., I don't think a lot can be said, except to congratulate you for starting to exercise !

But, one generalization I think can be made is that working out ... doing the same work-out ... more than four or five times per week is probably too much. And, particularly if you are "pushing your limits" you need to consider, and find, your body's minimal rest period for restoration.

On the other hand, if you are varying types of exercise, for example: doing cardio three times per week; doing weights twice a week; and swimming twice a week, imho, I think that can be a good thing.

The key thing is to avoid resuming exercise to fast, and too intensely, after a period of relatively not exercising. To do that is to risk injury, and the kind of exhaustion that will lead you to stop exercising, particularly: imho, if you are over fifty years of age.

A key variable you can work with, as referred to in several responses here, is "intensity:" as you probably already know, achieving a certain level of intensity, and maintaining it for a certain amount of time, is essential to increasing "aerobic fitness."

Similarly, the relatively newer concept of high-intensity interval-training (HIIT) in anaerobic exercise, suggests that short intense heavyweight work-outs, interspersed with exercise using lighter weights, can give you quicker gains in strength, and stamina (I have not seen studies of anaerobic HIIT and weight loss, or gain).

Finally, there's every indication that using "variety" in your work-outs, varying their type, and what you do, has a strong effect on total impact and carry-over of strength and fitness into everyday life.

For me (age 69), a combination of alternate days of aerobic exercise, and weights, with two days off, and then a swim-day, works best, but I vary that by sometimes doing a work-out where I alternate fifteen minutes on a treadmill with a circuit of several weight-machine exercises where I do high reps per set, and repeat that cycle three times.

The more you exercise and observe carefully how your body responds; the more you pay attention to your diet, and adapt to a more healthy way of eating, the easier it gets.

My own personal bias is that a longer-term effort involving exercise and slow change of diet is much better than any "dieting," per se. And, for some people, like myself, born with a very slow metabolism, and a large frame, we need to accept that being large (not obese, but heavy, and having more body-fat than other people) is just a natural part of who we are.

good luck, Bill

Answer 5

Strong Lifts

Like every one else said. Diet is going to be the main part. Look into eating paleo or keto. That will cut some weight fast depending on where you're at. Even eating right though I never got skinny. Strong lifts are what helped with that. It's lifting every other day. If you're worried you're going to get "Bulky" like the big guys at the gym. Trust me you won't. They spent years and years to get where they are with tremendous amounts of effort. Starting out I'm confident you'll see some muscle gain as well as weight loss.

Also - I went from a huge beer belly gut to getting pretty cut and working on getting a six pack. My best weight loss has been from weightlifting and doing zero cardio (not saying cardio is bad just saying it didn't help me cut weight like so many people praise it for)

Answer 6

I would recommend circuit workouts initially to get the best bang for your buck. Combine exercises that get your heart rate up with weight lifting and you will both burn fat and firm up with a little muscle, which also helps you to burn fat.

Since you are having difficulty maintaining the regimen you were on, try three to four days a week - this will help to maximize recovery and give you balance.

Obviously the longer the workout the more calories you are going to burn, but you can do simple things like combining upper and lower body exercises to maximize your calorie burn. (For example, add a squat to your bicep curls.) Make sure you alternate cardio with these strength exercises and you will really start to see some changes.

As you start getting stronger, make sure to increase weight or change up your routine - you want to keep your body guessing so you don't plateau.

There are tons of references out there and with a simple web search you can find a wide variety of sample circuit workouts. Just as an example check out this Circuit reference.