‘Weight loss exercises’ is one of the most searched terms on Google (228 million searches daily to be precise).
Hence, it would sense that with the amount of content on the internet that when someone visits a weight loss clinic in London for instance…that it would be easy!
But unfortunately it’s one of the most common questions we get at Miller & Everton.
“What are the best weight loss exercises?”
In truth, we hope to convince you that most people, sadly, have got it backwards.
So here are the first steps you need to know to ensure you perform the best weight loss exercises for your program.
First, Context is key
When you‘re trying to pick the best weight loss exercises context is the first thing you should be thinking about.
It’s essentially no good having the most amazing workout plan if you can’t follow it consistently, week in week out.
When we say most of the time, let’s say 5 days out of a 7 day week.
That‘s 70% of the time.
We have clients come to us who’ve barely made it to the gym or tried to do their home workout once a week!
Now, it’s easy to blame yourself and simply say, well you should have made time for it and of course, there are times when frankly we’ve entered ‘hibernation mode‘ and no exercise is being done.
Under those circumstances we need an injection of motivation and we talk a lot about modulating dopamine with our clients as a key aspect of this.
However, we all know that life becomes frankly crazy at times.
You may also have an erratic schedule eg. looking after kids/relatives, working from home, travel commitments, you might even be injured!
So your training program needs to be context-specific.
Reflecting your situation right now not what you would like it to be.
So if you’re just starting out or you’re in a bit of a rut having not been to the gym for a while.
Take whatever you would like to do training-wise at this stage and half it.
That’s training smart (we can work on training ‘hard’ later)
Start short and simple. Then build up
Our first recommendation for clients on weight loss journeys is to focus on small amounts of exercise volume and build up.
In fact, if you’ve followed step 1 above, then you‘ve already reduced your volume (‘volume‘ is the total number of sets and repetitions of exercises)
If you train in this way you can train more frequently because your body can recover much faster from smaller, more frequent workouts than it can from longer, heavier workouts.
This does not mean that you should find your nearest F45 or start blasting out Tabata and HIIT protocols in ‘10 minute ab classes’
It means, do 30-45 minutes of perhaps 3-5, multi joint movements and work the entire body.
You don’t need to count reps (although heading into the hypertrophy (muscle building) range of 8-20 repetitions is a good marker)
You don’t need to ‘sweat’ (although your heart rate will probably go up a bit). This is not what we are trying to achieve with our weight training. The sweating we can do with our cardiovascular training (such as jogging, running, cycling etc)
What you do need to do is focus on using the muscles you are trying to train. Take pride in your execution. Train with precision. If you don’t have lots of time, what you do needs to be accurate.
Think of becoming a craftsperson of your own training.
When you stop just ‘going through the motions’ or trying to finish as fast as possible, training is better quality and more effective.
An example of the above may consist of the below:
Incline bicep curl, 3 sets of 8 repetitions
Dumbell front foot elevated split squat, 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions (on each leg)
70 degree incline dumbell bench press, 3 x 10 repetitions
One arm dumbell row, 3 x 10 repetitions (on each side)
I can already hear people saying:
’But that‘s not enough exercise! I need to do more!’
Sure. You can do more, this is just a starting point.
Once you hit that 70% mark, you can increase your volume and the frequency at which you train, provided of course you can recover from it!
Make your life as active as possible
People try to reinvent the wheel all the time in the fitness industry but one thing that really helps fat fall off the body is keeping yourself active.
This is part of the reason obesity was pretty rare in the mid-20th century (think post-World War 2 time…).
Yes diet was important – we’ll get to that.
However, life back then was just way more active.
Ask anyone old enough to remember the Rock and Roll era and you’ll get the picture.
Some examples:
Vacuum cleaners were really heavy, inefficient and handheld
Most people bought and carried their shopping home
All gardening equipment was heavy and manual.
There were virtually no cars on the road (although this was increasing) people walked or cycled everywhere or took the bus (which required you to walk to a bus stop)
Typical jobs involved manual labour (such as factory work, mining, building). Even a person at home looking after the children had a hard day’s work!
Are we suggesting you go back to a 50s style approach to life.
Absolutely not.
Are we suggesting you take every opportunity to be active?
Yes.
Some really easy things you can do today.
1. Make a standing desk (yes this can just be a pile of books with your laptop on). You won’t burn a terrific amount of calories but you will feel more awake which will encourage you to be more active
2. Take more calls whilst walking about. If it’s good weather just walk around in the neighbourhood or in your garden, up and down the stairs etc.
You will instantly boost your step count for the day, help oxygenate your brain and the movement will help reduce ‘nerves’ if it’s a tricky call (this is a trick stand up comedians use, they pace the stage or tap their foot).
3. Play with your kids and/or dog. Rick’s a dad of two beautiful kids and whilst being a parent has its own challenges, he says one thing kids are amazing for is keeping you active.
Nothing burns calories at a faster pace than running around after kids, teaching them new skills or even using them as ‘resistance‘ for various exercises (try doing perfect pushups with a 25kg 7 year old lying on your back…)
4. Make your evenings active. We‘re both really keen to advise our clients to limit their screen use (particularly smart phone use) for a whole bunch of health, performance and longevity reasons.
One thing that really kills weight loss exercise progress is turning every evening into ‘Netflix and (insert favourite snack food here) nights’.
Instead, do something active.
Again, context is key.
and keep it light.
Even a simple walk can do wonders to break the Netflix cycle.
Now start working on your diet
You’re probably now wondering why we left diet until the very end.
Surely, ‘abs are made in the kitchen, right?‘
Well actually there’s two reasons:
1) This blog post is about exercise primarily 🤪
2) Secondly, assuming no other health problems and if you get the exercise right, you can get away with not making enormous changes to your diet.
In fact, we would go as far as to say that for some of our clients, getting more active is more important than diet and can produce pretty dramatic changes in body composition.
We know that’s not trendy right now in the era of ’popular weight loss diets’
But history teaches us a lot.
Again let’s go back in time to the…1950s
There were no dietary guidelines (or barely any let’s just put it that way).
Obesity and being overweight barely existed.
This was also the era when McDonalds, Burger King and other fast foods came on the scene…
So it’s not like everyone ate a perfectly wholesome ‘clean’ diet.
But everyone was really active, a lot of the time and ate 3 square meals a day with little to no snacking. Their recreation time was mostly active (ever tried ‘jiving’) and there was little in the way of sedentary time.
So are we saying don’t bother looking at your diet?
Not at all, what we’re saying is don’t fixate on finding the perfect diet for weight loss.
It doesn’t exist and we personalise diet to each of our clients, keeping things simple and realistic.
Try this for starters:
– Eat protein at each main meal. Fill half your plate with vegetables (mostly green ones but go crazy with colours here).
– The rest can be a small portion of starchy carbohydrates (potatoes are ideal, white or sweet).
– Eat from a standard 9” dinner plate.
– Eat slowly taking at least 20-30 minutes to eat your meal. STOP looking at your phone during a meal and just focus on chewing.
– Don’t snack (or if your stomach is rumbling, eat some raw vegetable or a piece of fruit).
– Drink 2-3.0L of water per day.
– Take a pharmaceutical grade multi-vitamin and mineral or ideally, get some blood work done and fill in the gaps.
– Monitor your weight once a week. If you’re losing 1% of your original body weight per week, do nothing. If it’s more, add a touch more food.
This isn’t a diet, it’s a start and most people (assuming no other health or disorders of eating problems, can do just fine on this).
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