What is the ideal workout routine in the gym for a man trying to lose weight?

rifathkhan80545

I go to the gym and hop on the treadmill for like 20-30 mins and then do any strength training and that’s it. I’m in the gym for like an hour. I wanna lose weight but I do not know if I am doing the right thing in the gym.

nossmf

First, let's break the thought-connection between exercise and losing weight. Exercise can HELP to lose weight, but ultimately it's all about what we put in our mouths when eating that determines if we lose weight. Drop the calories, lose the weight.

That said, continuing to exercise even while losing weight is an excellent idea, not because it causes weight loss but because we want to ensure any weight that is lost is mostly fat, not muscle. A body that sits around all day and eats less, the brain thinks, "hey, let's get rid of this muscle that's not doing anything useful, and keep the fat for emergencies". But when exercising, the brain realizes, "we need to keep this muscle around to fight off the saber-tooth tiger we keep encountering". Yes, the body does not know the difference between tigers and treadmills, silly body.

So which exercise should you be doing while losing weight? Answer: whichever one you can keep doing consistently. Any exercise done regularly, consistently, is better than any "perfect" exercise done once a week because you cannot stand it, can't afford it, get injured doing it, etc. If a treadmill followed by strength training works for you, keeps your interest and fits in your budget and schedule, then you're doing great! If you've been meaning to try something else and held off because it's not "ideal", now is a great time to try it, see how you like it.

Just keep controlling what goes in the mouth, and the weight will follow. Keep doing whatever exercise you enjoy, and the muscle will follow.

tomcustombuilder

The more sedentary you are the more cardio comes into play. Actual Gym workouts don't really burn that many calories so look to your diet as the main driver for fatloss. In a deficit it's important to be doing strength training or you'll just look like a lighter version of your formal self due to losing muscle along with fat

neanderthin

Spoiler: it's the amount of food we consume. 😉

AnnPT77

Agree 100% with nossmf up there - great, comprehensive advice. One small thing I'd add as generic advice - that may not apply to you - is that overdoing exercise is a common mistake when new, and overdoing is counter-productive for either calorie management or fitness improvement.

How can be counter-productive for overall calorie expenditure? Because if we do more than optimal for our current fitness level, we drag through the rest of the day(s), resting more and doing less - maybe in subtle ways - all day long. Most of us burn several times more calories daily doing routine life stuff like chores, job, non-exercise hobbies than we burn in an exercise session. Bleeding that daily-life calorie expenditure out of our day can effectively cancel out some of the exercise calories when looked at from an all-day perspective.

On the fitness improvement front, overdoing means under-recovering, and recovery is where the magic happens: The body building back better. It's true on either the cardiovascular front or the strength front, but easier to explain briefly for strength: Working some of the same muscle groups hard every day doesn't let those muscles do the desired rebuilding; a longer break is necessary for best recovery/rebuilding.

What's ideal is a manageably challenging routine, maybe a few minutes of "whew" right after the workout, but then feeling mostly energized for the rest of the day, not exhausted, from the total exercise load. "Total exercise load" is the combination of frequency, intensity, duration, and type of exercise.

The "manageable" and "energized" parts help avoid fatigue-reduced calorie expenditure that can affect weight loss rate, and the "challenging" part is what creates fitness progress. When the exercise load we're doing gets pretty easy, it's time to up the challenge if we want to keep making fitness progress.

Best wishes!

ddsb1111

If you’re lifting for an hour, you’re probably only burning 300 calories, which is only a cup of vegetable soup, a bowl of cottage cheese with berries, or even a whole avocado.

I wouldn’t rely on lifting to lose weight. However, I would use it to improve body shape as you lose weight through your diet.

Enter your goals in MFP and it will tell you how many calories to eat to lose 1-2 lbs a week. The best way to do that accurately is a food scale as food creep is a real thing.

yirara

I'd think that even 300kcal for lifting would be very high. I log 100kcal for a 40min session with breaks of course. Could be more of course, but eating this back works for me.