Treadmill exercise is an ideal way to burn extra calories daily and aid weight loss. With cardio exercise such as brisk walking, strive to burn 300 additional calories daily.
This means working out for about 60 minutes a day at a moderate intensity and watching how many calories you eat.
Congratulations on making a favourable decision if you’re walking your way to weight loss on a treadmill. Audra Wilson, MS, RD, LDN, CSCS, a bariatric dietitian at the Northwestern Medicine Metabolic Health & Surgical Weight Loss Center at Delnor Hospital in Geneva, IL, says that walking is an excellent way to lose weight, especially for people who are just starting.
“It’s pretty low-impact,” she explained. “It’s all done in a secure environment… It’s a safe way for beginners to just get started moving.”
But you need to figure out how long you should walk and how fast you should walk. Continue reading for those responses and additional guidance on making treadmill walking for weight loss a breeze.
Treadmill Weight Loss Recommendations
You can push your body during this program by changing the exercises throughout the week. Some days will be more complex, and others will be easier.
I can tweak this plan to suit your needs. Rest days can be added if needed, but it’s best to have less than one in a row.
If you can’t schedule enough time on the treadmill, you have a few choices to hit your calorie-burn target.
- High-intensity exercise
- Moderate-intensity, longer-duration workouts
- Vigorous-intensity, short-duration workouts
Add Strength Training
While treadmill walking can help you lose weight and improve your health, add at least two days of strength training to your weekly schedule. Your body will become more effective at burning calories as you develop muscle.
The extra muscle can also help you improve your balance and bone strength, making your treadmill workouts more successful.
Dumbbells, barbells, weight machines, and resistance bands can all be used for strength training.
Squats, lunges, push-ups, pull-ups, planks, and abdominal crunches are body-weight exercises.
According to the Physical Activity Recommendations for Americans, I should do intensity training at least twice a week for all my major muscle groups. You can do total-body workouts or divide the movements over several days to separate various muscle groups.
Take some time to relax as well. A full day of rest will aid your body’s recovery and encourage your muscles to develop.
You can turn it into an active rest day by doing light exercises like a slow treadmill walk. Take advantage of the opportunity to go for a fair hike outside—the fresh air will do you good.
Increase the Strength of Your Workout
You’ll lose even more calories if you do a more rigorous treadmill workout. According to Harvard Health Publishing, add an incline to use more muscles and improve your caloric needs.
Increasing the pace at which you walk or adding short bursts of running to your exercise will help you improve the strength of your workout.
Combining short bursts of high-intensity exercise with rest periods is an efficient way to burn more calories.
According to the American Council on Exercise, this form of workout, known as high-intensity interval training (HIIT), increases the body’s oxygen demands. As a result, the calorie expenditure would be higher before and after your workout.
When doing a treadmill HIIT workout, equally space the interval and recovery times. Here’s an example of a HIIT workout:
1. Start with a fast warm-up of three to five minutes of moderate-paced walking.
2. For 30 seconds, jog or sprint.
3. Take a 90-second stroll.
4. Do this a few times more for 20 to 30 minutes.
If you gain stamina or want to change your routine, you can do longer cycles with shorter recovery times. For example, a Tabata-style workout consists of 20 seconds of hard work followed by 10 seconds of rest.
HIIT should be difficult enough to leave you gasping for air at the end of each work interval.
According to ACE, they should perform HIIT at a frequency of 8 or higher for 30 seconds or fewer on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest strength and ten being the highest.
Tabata’s teaching is the same way. The efforts’ extreme strength and short duration distinguish this type of training from other intense exercises.
Read more: In Just 4 Minutes, This Tabata-Inspired Workout Blasts Fat.
The Treadmill Will Help You Lose Weight
Burning calories on the treadmill will not only help you lose weight, but it will also help you get rid of dangerous fat around your midsection’s internal organs. This visceral fat, which varies from the fat you can pinch with your fingertips, is worrying because we have connected it to several health issues.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, they relate visceral fat leads to poor insulin control, an elevated risk of heart disease, and high cholesterol. You won’t be able to lose belly fat or any other form of fat by walking on a treadmill, but you can burn total body fat.
If you’re unsure if visceral fat is an issue, assess your risk factors for abdominal obesity. Measuring your waist circumference is an easy and inexpensive process. Here’s how to do it:
1. Take off your shoes and stand together on your feet.
2. Fully exhale.
3. For a bare belly, measure the waist at the navel with a flexible measuring tape.
4. Calculate to the nearest tenth of an inch and write it down.
A waist circumference of 37 inches or less is considered low risk for men. It’s 31.5 inches for women. For men, 40 inches and above is a high risk, whereas 35 inches and above is an increased risk for women.
What Is a Good Body Fat Percentage? Read more: What Is a Healthy Body Fat Percentage?