Exercises to Lose Weight

Thruster

The best exercises to lose weight are those that use the most muscle at once. Exercises like the squat, lunge, thruster, and burpee can all be done at home or in the gym with anything from a simple pair of dumbbells, to a heavy barbell.

Burpee

It makes sense that the exercises that are the most difficult to do are the ones that are going to make you lose weight the fastest. There is a huge difference between the workout someone gets who is moving from seated station to seated station at a gym, barely breaking a sweat, versus someone who is moving their entire body during a tough movement.

Exercises to Lose Weight | Better Than Diet Alone

If you’re trying to lose weight quickly, yet don’t want to have that saggy ‘deflated’ look that some people get when losing weight, you need to tone your muscles while you lose weight. The best exercises to lose weight and tone are circuit training exercises. These are exercises performed in quick succession with little to no rest between sets. This not only keeps your heartrate up, it also strengthens and tones your muscles. This combination of increased heartrate and challenging your muscles is what makes these great exercises to lose weight.

Workout Routines to Lose Weight

This is a simple system: Pick 1 exercise from Group A, 1 from Group B, etc… and set yourself a 20 minute time limit to see how many repetitions you can do. There are a few ways you can do this to make it more fun and challenging:

Rep systems:

1) The 10 system. Do 10 reps of exercise A, then 10 of B, etc… until you reach the end. That’s 1 round. See how many rounds you can do in the 20 minutes. A score would be something like 4 rounds + 7 push-ups, which lets you know you got to the push-ups group before time ran out.

2) Descending system. Do rounds of 10 reps for each exercise for round 1, then 9 each on round 2, 8 on round 3, etc… and see how far you can get before time runs out. If you reach 1, start going back up.

3) Tabata system. Do as many reps of one exercise as you can in one minute, then take 30 seconds of rest and move on to the next exercise. Be sure to write down how many reps you do for each exercise while you are resting. Keep this up until the 20 minutes are up.

The key with all of these systems is to make sure you write down what exercises you did and how many rounds/reps you managed to do. This will make it so that you can challenge yourself the next time you do the workout and try to get a better score.

Group A Exercises to Lose Weight

1- Pushups; 2- Thrusters; 3- Burpees

Group B Exercises to Lose Weight

1- Pull-ups;  2- Bent over rows; 3- Deadlifts

Group C Exercises to Lose Weight

1- Squats; 2- Lunges; 3- Box Jumps

Group D Exercises to Lose Weight

1- Sit-ups; 2- Swimming Legs; 3- Leg Raises

Notes:

In group b, you can do deadlifts with anything you have handy, whether that’s dumbbells, a barbell, gallon milk jugs filled with water, etc… In group c, you can do “box jumps” using anything you can jump on that’s in between knee and thigh level, so a bench, chair, or couch will do fine. In group d, substitute crunches if you can’t do a full sit-up.

Try to do a slightly different workout every time until you’ve cycled through all of the combinations possible. You can get even greater variety by altering your hand positions on the push-ups and pull-ups. By the time you repeat one of these workouts, your # of reps will have increased by a huge amount.

For weight loss, I recommend doing these workouts every other day paired with 20-30 minutes of light jogging or fast walking beforehand. On your off days, increase the time you walk/jog to closer to 45-60 minutes. You can also do any other type of cardio that gets your heart rate up, just shoot for the 45+ minute range to really make awesome progress.

Recommended Workout Program

The P90X program is without a doubt one of the best workout programs to lose weight. All it takes is watching a few of the videos on their Amazon sales page here to see what I mean. They follow the high intensity circuit training approach that I recommend on this page, and if you needed any more confirmation that this type of training works, just check out the reviews of their program here.

Recommended Books

There are a couple of books I really like that incorporate this style of training into comprehensive programs that add in a lot more exercises as well:

For Men: 
Spartan Warrior Workout: Get Action Movie Ripped in 30 Days is a book that has tons of high intensity exercises designed to burn fat and add muscle just like the workouts I list on this site.

For Women:
This Is Why You’re Fat (And How to Get Thin Forever): Eat More, Cheat More, Lose More–and Keep the Weight Off is a great book that I was looking at the other day in the bookstore. It’s really solid information delivered in a no-nonsense way that cuts through the “fluff” talk. I like this author’s style and the information is great.