These Are the Best Kinds of Exercise for Losing Weight

Starting an exercise routine doesn’t guarantee that you’ll lose weight, but a lot of us add exercise into our routines when we have a weight loss goal. Read on, and I’ll explain what you really need to know about exercise for weight loss—what kind, how much, and whether it even matters at all.  Yes, exercise (sort of) helps you lose weight There’s a cliché in the fitness world that the best weight-loss exercises are “fork putdowns and plate pushaways.” I hate when people turn fitness goals into restrictive eating goals, so this framing irritates me, but there is a grain of truth to it.  The true part is that your body weight is determined by both how much activity you do and how much you eat . You need to pay attention to both sides of the equation if you want predictable results. So if you just add exercise, without changing how you eat, you might end up eating more without realizing it, and thus stay the same weight.  You May Also Like But that’s only part of the picture. Technically , you can lose weight just by eating less food, without adding exercise at all. But is that a good idea? Not at all. Exercise is good for us, in terms of heart health , mental health , ability to stay functional as you age , and a hundred more reasons. Those benefits apply whether we’re losing weight or not.  How exercise helps you to eat healthier Ultimately, the role of exercise in weight loss isn’t (just) to make the weight loss happen, but to keep you healthier while you’re losing weight. That includes maintaining muscle mass and improving heart health, both of which I’ll talk about in a moment. But there’s more: An under-appreciated aspect of exercise is that the more you do it, the more you set yourself up for a healthier diet, a less restrictive attitude toward eating, and better energy levels. Let’s say we have a pair of twins who don’t exercise much, and they each burn about 2,000 calories a day. One decides to lose weight by eating 1,500 calories, changing nothing else. The other adds enough exercise each day to burn about 500 calories, and thus gets to continue eating 2,000. Both twins are now in a 500 calorie deficit, and should lose about a pound a week. Same thing, right? Not quite.  Who’s going to have more room in their diet to eat more protein, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals? The person who’s eating 2,000.  Who’s more likely to be able to have their favorite dessert from time to time, instead of cutting it out for the length of the diet? The person who’s eating 2,000.  Who’s going to be able to eat more carbs, thus fueling themselves better for whatever amount of exercise that they end up doing? The person who’s eating 2,000.  So because both twins are using the same 500-calorie deficit, by the numbers you could say these approaches are equivalent. But the people taking these two approaches will have drastically different experiences.  The most important type of exercise for weight loss: strength training If you can only do one type of exercise while you try to lose weight, I’d argue it shouldn’t be anything to do with calorie burn at all. It should be strength training.  This includes any type of exercise where the goal is to build strength and muscle. Lifting weights in a gym is the most straightforward example, but you can do strength building exercises with other types of equipment or, in some cases, with no equipment at all. I have a list here of 12 bodyweight exercises that will actually build strength , once you get strong enough that the basics like pushups and air squats get too easy. In general, if you can do more than 15 of something before your muscles fatigue, you should move on to a heavier weight or a harder exercise. This is because we don’t just want to work on endurance (that’s not the point of strength training). It’s because we want to convince our bodies to build muscle—or at least to hold on to the muscle we already have.  When we lose weight, we’re usually hoping to lose fat, but muscle often goes along with it. Losing muscle means we’re more likely to regain the weight lost. It also means we’ll have a harder time doing other types of exercise; better to run on strong legs than weak legs. And it can also make us weaker when it comes to everyday activities. Muscle loss is a huge problem for older adults, but strength training can slow or reverse it.  How much strength training to do when losing weight:  Train twice a week, minimum. Try to work every body part, including upper and lower body muscles, with pushing and pulling motions.  Aim for a minimum of three sets of each exercise, with anywhere between 5 and 15 reps per set. By the end you should feel like you can’t do any more (or that maybe you could have done on