Although reducing calories and eating more healthfully will accelerate your rate of weight loss, adding more movement to your days can alone help you drop pounds. If you burn 250 to 500 calories more each day, you can stimulate a healthy weight loss rate of .5 to 1 lb. per week. Keep your calorie intake steady, despite your increase in activity, to ensure weight loss occurs.
Cardio Exercise
Carving out an hour for moderate intensity, cardiovascular exercise at least five times per week helps with weight loss, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. The modality of the exercise should be one you enjoy, so you are likely to stick to it—cycling, hiking, swimming, running or walking all qualify as cardiovascular activities. To keep from getting bored with one type of exercise, change your routine often. During a half hour jog, a 150-lb. woman going 6 mph can burn about 350 calories.
Turn the Television Off
The Harvard School of Public Health recommends turning off the television so you will be inclined to do something more active. While sitting and watching television burns about 60 calories an hour, taking a walk burns about 300 calories for a 160-lb. person in an hour.
Strength Train
When you hit the gym, spend some time on the weight room floor. Using free weights, weight machines or simple body weight exercises help build lean muscle mass, which contributes to a higher metabolism. The journal “Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise” published a study in May 2009 showing that resistance training, when done for just 11 minutes, three times per week for six months, causes a 24-hour post-training metabolic boost.
Move
Move more during the day to burn more calories. Small movements known as nonexercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, make up between 15 and 50 percent the calories you burn daily, reported Denise Grady in “The New York Times” in 2005. Create more movement, like gesturing, fidgeting, chewing gum, standing and laughing to burn more calories just living. Through this kind of movement, leaner people burn as much as 350 more calories per day than heavier, sedentary people.
About this Author
Andrea Cespedes is a professionally trained chef who has focused studies in nutrition. With more than 20 years of experience in the fitness industry, she coaches cycling and running and teaches Pilates and yoga. She is an American Council on Exercise-certified personal trainer and has degrees from Princeton and Columbia University.
