Best Exercises for Weight Loss

It’s a common topic: what are the best exercises for weight loss? Because if you’re going to put in the work, you might as well get the most bang for your buck!

Whenever I talk to beginner exercisers or people who want to lose weight, they say, “I’m just going to start with cardio, and once I lose weight, I’ll begin strength training.”

I understand that the idea of doing it all at once can be overwhelming, but strength training is not only a huge part of losing weight and feeling healthy—it’s the KEY. Best of all, it’s easier than you might think and often requires just your body weight.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a huge fan of cardio! I love the way it makes me feel, and I love the satisfaction of seeing how many calories I’ve burned, how many steps I’ve taken, and what zone I’ve been training in.

But when it comes to long-term weight loss and definition: STRENGTH TRAINING ROCKS!

Below, I’m diving into four strength training exercises for weight loss. All four exercises are bodyweight moves and require ZERO equipment. (And once you’re ready, I also have tips for how to lose 10 pounds in a month!)

Best Strength Exercises for Weight Loss

Muscle is more metabolically active than body fat. In other words, muscle burns more calories per day at a resting heart rate than body fat. Thus, the more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns daily.

In addition, muscle is more compact (dense) than body fat and helps to give your body that sculpted, toned look.

It’s never too late to start strength training and the below exercises for weight loss are a great place to start!

First things first: utilize your body weight! These exercises will help you build muscle, lose weight, and feel better than ever. Here they are:

1. Push-Ups

Push-ups are one of the best bodyweight exercises ever invented; they require zero equipment, build strength in all right places, have many variations to keep things fresh, and are easy to modify and track progress.

You can burn calories while working multiple muscle groups and shape your body at the same time.

How many pushups a day to lose weight?

The honest answer to how many pushups a day is really – it depends. Building muscle is all about challenging yourself enough to provoke your body to build strength.

As we know, the process of building strength is all about taxing your muscles. When that happens, your body responds by making more muscle. So there is no magic number to how many pushups a day to lose weight. Rather, it’s the total amount of time that you challenge yourself to do push-ups over a week, for example, or so that will build strength to help build muscle.

Focus on tracking your progress, like how many push-ups you can complete back to back or how many push-up reps you can do in 3 sets.

For most of us, doing push-ups several times a week will lead to muscle gains, but doing push-ups alone is unlikely to be enough for someone looking to shed a lot of weight.

Yes, if you were to do them continuously, you would burn a ton of calories, but your body would fatigue very quickly before the calorie burn benefit would take place.

The push-up is an amazingly effective move, and it should be part of your weekly strength training routine, however, push-ups alone fail to provide the many benefits that come with challenging fitness routines, such as raising your metabolism and making you leaner.

Make sure to pair your push-ups with a consistent cardio schedule, and you’ll lose weight in no time.

How To Do A Push-Up

When it comes to push-ups, form is crucial. Each push-up needs to be a full range of motion.

If you only go halfway down or push your butt up in the air for several reps, you shouldn’t count them. Sounds harsh? Well, cheating never gets you ahead. Here’s how to do a proper push-up:

• Set your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, hands facing forward.
• Set your feet directly behind you at a comfortable position (together or slightly separated). The further apart your feet are, the more stable you will be until you are able to build your balance up enough to put your feet together.
• Make your body into on straight line from the top of your head down through your heels. Your butt should stay in line with your legs and back, never up in the air. Your abs engaged and your shoulders over your wrists. (Basically a full body plank position.) Keep your neck neutral, don’t drop your head or crank it back.
• With your arms straight, glutes and abs contracted, slowly lower your body until your chest touches the ground, or arms are at approx. a 90-degree angle, and push yourself back into your starting position. Try to keep your core body steady. Don’t sag through the low back or push your butt way up in the air.

2. Squats

Be proud of your buns! When women ask me the best way to firm their butts and tone their legs, I tell them to get their squat on! You need those glute muscles to do lots of everyday activities.

Squats also improve the mobility in your hips, legs, and upper back. And as you get older, the strength and stability you develop from squats can help you out of a chair, reach for something on the floor, or simply prevent injury.

Do squats help you lose weight? How many squats a day to lose weight?

Because your glutes are such a large muscle, squats can help you lose weight as you build muscle and pair them with cardiovascular exercise. Losing weight is not as simple as saying, “do 50 squats,” however doing 20-30 squats should make your heart rate rise!

The weight loss benefit derived from doing squats becomes apparent after consistent training when lean muscle tissue is built, and body fat is diminished.

If you did only squats as an exercise, you could theoretically lose weight because the move elevates your heart rate, burning calories. However, doing just squats for weight loss would be too intense, repetitive, and potentially cause injury. So including them in your overall weight loss strategy is better than relying on squats alone for weight loss.

Squats are a very effective exercise to include in your weekly strength training program because your glutes, quads, and leg muscles will grow, and your metabolism will thank you for it.

The squat engages your muscles and squats with added resistance help you build additional muscle, which leads to other caloric benefits down the road.

How To Do A Squat

• Drop and squat. Take an athletic, wide stance, point your toes outward slightly and sit back. Your butt should protrude out like you are sitting down in an invisible chair. Stay steady and strong as you squat deeper and try to keep your heels on the ground. The wider you put your feet the more it works your glutes and hamstrings (the back of your legs) and the easier it will be for you to stay stable. If your feet are a little closer, you will work your quadriceps a little more intensely (the front part of your thighs).
• Make sure your knees track over your toes. Don’t let your knees cave in to the center, engage your inner thighs and quads.
• Keep your chest lifted, shoulders down, abs tight. Make sure your spine is in proper alignment. Make sure you aren’t arching your back or scrunching your shoulders up around your neck. Pull your belly to your spine and contract your abs.
• Don’t round your neck. Look straight ahead or find a point of focus in line with your eyes. You don’t want to round your neck or look down at the ground.
• Get deep. Depending on your hip flexibility, you may be able to squat pretty low – try for quads parallel with the floor. If your flexibility isn’t yet to that level, that’s okay. Just remember that flexibility is something you can work on to improve. Aim for parallel which will deeply engage your thighs, hips and glutes.

3. Lunges

Lunges are great exercises for weight loss since you can lunge anytime, anywhere! They firm up your backside, give you a shapelier bottom (who doesn’t want that?), and they also strengthen your glutes, hamstrings, quads, and calves. The lunge is also a great conditioning exercise for many sports and activities. Get ready to see the results in your bottom half.

How To Do A Basic Forward Lunge

• With your chest lifted, chin up and abs contracted take a big step forward with your left foot.  Sink straight down so your front left knee tracks over the top of your shoe and your back right  knee points down toward the floor.  You are on your back right toe.  Push back to the starting position. Repeat on the right leg. Keep alternating. A good place to start is with 10-12 lunges on each leg and work your way up to 3 sets.
• Keep your knees aligned, front knee over your shoe and back knee pointing down.
• Watch yourself lunge with a side view mirror.  Make sure you aren’t leaning too far forward or back or rounding your spine.
• Keep your knees, hips and shoulders all facing in same direction, forward.
• Think about how you are distributing your body weight.  Don’t force your weight into your kneecaps but rather use them as a hinge. Engage your quads, hamstrings and glutes.

4. Full Body Roll Ups

I call the Full Body Roll Up the mother of mat Pilates exercises.

It has been said that one Pilates Full Body Roll Up is equal to six sit-ups and way more effective than a bunch of mindless crunches.

How To Do Full Body Roll-Ups

• Lie flat on your back with your arms extended overhead.
• Inhale arms to the sky, exhale and slowly roll up into a “C” curve reaching for your toes. (Think about threading your belly button to your spine, and activate your transverse abdominus.)
• Inhale and start to slowly go back in a C curve.
• Exhale as you uncurl your body one vertebra at a time back into the mat.
• The key is to keep your feet on the ground. Use your abs and back to gracefully articulate down to the mat and avoid using your hip flexors and glutes.
• If you have trouble keeping your feet on the ground, have someone hold your feet or use a resistance band around your feet and hold the handles in your hand.
• Or bend your knees as you come up. It’s always okay to modify!

Start with 3-5 and see if you can add a couple more each day.

Should you do sit-ups for weight loss?

While we favor the full-body roll-up over the sit-up, the traditional core move is still helpful in specific scenarios.

Sit-ups are unlikely to provide much weight loss benefit on their own. While a sit-up does help to build muscle and burn some calories, it is meant as a strength training move, not a weight loss exercise.

A sit-up is focused on a small part of the body compared to other exercises, which means it will not raise your heart rate enough to burn significant calories.

Calorie burn is a necessity for consistent weight loss. Sit-ups only would be a very inefficient weight loss plan but they can be included in an overall fitness plan.

Now that you’ve learned four of the best exercises for weight loss, it’s time to add in cardio workouts. Make sure to check out our guide to the best cardio moves for weight loss.

If you’re a fan of the treadmill, we have you covered there too—check out our best treadmill workouts for weight loss.

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