If you’ve decided to lose weight and want to incorporate fitness into your goals, congratulations! You’re already going one step farther than many people do. While it’s important to remember that fitness is an additive change in this project rather than a defining principle, it’s still an excellent way to help drive you towards your targets.
The Importance of Fitness in Losing Weight
As mentioned above, fitness is what might be thought of as an additive habit, as opposed to the substitutive nature of dietary changes. But what exactly does that mean?
If you don’t already exercise and want to get started, you’ll have to build new habits into your life that weren’t already there. That’s one reason that people tend to give up their generic “exercise more” resolution each year; it’s too easy to deplete our desire to keep up by burning through our willpower early on.
Adjusting a diet, on the other hand, is substitutive because it’s a matter of making a different decision that you already have to make; we already need to eat every day! It’s also easier to make these substitutions in smaller increments, laying a strong foundation for consistency.
That said, if you’ve already cleaned up your diet and are still looking to lose a few stubborn pounds, changing up your fitness routine is an excellent way to make that happen. While it’s still not possible to target any particular part of the body, a good fitness routine makes it possible to burn fat without destroying precious muscle.
How to Change Up Your Fitness Routine to Help You Lose Weight
Although fitness isn’t technically necessary to lose weight, it’s still strongly recommended to do so. There are three forms of it overall, and each one has its importance in a healthy lifestyle:
- Cardio, or any kind of fun movement that gets your heart pumping
- Interval training, or variable rate
- Strength training, or engaging your muscles to make them stronger
Cardio
Exercising your heart makes it healthier, and it’s a physical reminder that you’ve committed to a new lifestyle. It doesn’t even matter what kind of cardio you do; it’s more important that it’s something fun and inspires you to keep doing it.
High-Intensity Interval Training
You burn through even more calories with high-intensity interval training (HIIT), making it a more “efficient” choice when you’re ready to lose weight. If you’re someone who is limited on time but still wants to find more time to shed a few pounds, consider that 20 minutes of HIIT beats 20 minutes of steady movement every time.
Strength Training for Weight Loss
There’s absolutely no rival when it comes to strength training. Couple this with caloric restriction, and weight loss is a foregone conclusion.
What Can Hurt Your Weight Loss From a Fitness Routine?
Aside from burning through all your willpower from the get-go, the number one determinant for exercise inadequacy is a failure to define your goals. Regardless of what they are, they’ll shape how you build a workout and milestones.
Many people opt to use the SMART method to create their goals, meaning making plans that are:
- Specific: Explicitly state your goal, such as “I want to lose 10 pounds of fat,” to help visualize it.
- Measurable: However you choose to measure your progress, some kind of metric helps you see how well you’re keeping pace.
- Attainable: Importantly, your weight loss goal must be realistic; losing 10 pounds in three days is not attainable!
- Relevant: If your weight loss goal doesn’t relate to your interests, you’re unlikely to stick with it. Make sure you know why you want to lose those 10 pounds and how it will benefit your life.
- Timely: Your goal needs a timeline. This goes hand-in-hand with attainability.
If you’re ever struggling with a new fitness goal, revisiting this framework can help you make useful adjustments to get you back on track.
The Bottom Line
To recap, remember that making small changes is an ongoing part of the game. Every time your changes become a new normal, it’s time to move the goal post. After all, growth only happens outside of your comfort zone, so be sure that you’re always pursuing consistent persistence.
