How Many Times a Week Should I Go to the Gym to Lose Weight?

When it comes to healthy weight loss, including bothcardiovascular exercise and strength trainingin your overall program is key to losing and keeping off the pounds. While you may have a core understanding of this information, knowing thenumber of days you need to exercisecan be confusing.

The general recommendation forsafe weight lossis no more than 1 to 2 pounds per week. If you want tolose 1 pound each week,you need to create a3,500-calorie deficit, which means, you need to burn off 3,500 more calories than you eat in one week or 500 calories each day.

考虑到这一点,坚持five-day-per-weekexercise schedule should help you reach your goals. Since fitness looks different for everyone,all five of these days don't have to be at the gym.

If you enjoy outdoor aerobic activities, you can choose to do your strength training, plus one to two cardio sessions, at the gym three days a week and do your other two days of cardio outdoors. But if the gym is where you like working out, there are plenty of activities to spread out over your five days, including cardio equipment, weight training and fitness classes.

Health.gov'sPhysical Activity Guidelines for Americansrecommends at least150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate-intensityor 75 to 150 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise.

To lose weight, the guidelines also recommend goingbeyond the 300 minutesof moderate-intensity physical activity a week. Additionally, they recommend doing strength-training activities that involve all major muscle groups at least two days each week.

How much you need to move beyond the 300 minutes depends on a variety of factors, including your current weight, age, caloric intake, gender and your goals.

Performcardio exercise three to five days a weekfor30 to 60 minutes each session. These sessions can be moderate-intensity exercises such as walking, swimming, or cardio equipment at the gym.

If you choose to do high-intensity interval training, you can reduce the total amount of time. For example, do sprints alternating with jogging intervals on the treadmill for 20 to 30 minutes. Stick to two days of high-intensity interval training and three days of moderate-intensity cardio sessions.

To maximize your time spent doing cardio exercise, consider choosing physical activities that burn the most calories in the least amount of time. This typically involves using the large muscles of your lower body at an intensity that's equal to moderate or vigorous, such as running, cycling and most cardio machines.

Read more:How Many Days a Week Should I Do Cardio to Lose Weight?

Sure, sweating it out on the treadmill is going to increase the number of calories you burn. Butto lose weight, it's also a good idea to include at leasttwo to three days a week of strength training. Including resistance training in your overall fitness routine helps you increase lean muscle mass, which helps toincrease your metabolismand burn calories at a higher rate.

To get the most out of your two to three days at the gym, focus onfull-body workoutsthatinclude compound exercises如行,下蹲,弓步和胸部。乡村小道cture your gym workout according to some basic guidelines:

• Choose one to two exercises per body part, for example, squats and lunges for lower body, chest press for shoulders and chest, rows for back and biceps and planks for core and upper body.
• Perform two to three sets of eight to 12 repetitions of each exercise.
• You can also mix in pushups, planks, pullups and arm exercises such as dips and biceps curls.
• Follow an alternate-day schedule. For example, do a full-body strength-training workout on Monday, Wednesday and Friday or Tuesday and Thursday if you're only doing two days of resistance training.

Read more:Strength Training for Losing Weight

To round out your fitness routine, make sure to includeflexibility and stretching exerciseson your workout days. And don't forget about rest: Schedule at least one to two days of rest each week. You can participate in active recovery exercises such as yoga or light stretching on your rest days.