Hey! Im starting to plan my summer workout and I was hoping you lot would be able to address some issues for me. I would be ever so grateful if you could help me out.

1. I want to lose weight as fast as I can, and I know I’m only going to do that through exercise and a good diet.
I was just wondering if you could let me know what the most effective fat burning exercise is? For example, what types of exercise should I concentrate on in order to lose the most amount of fat?

2. Is it possible to do effective strength training with just a pair of dumbbells?

3. I quite enjoy cardio vascular exercise such as running and cycling, and as I want to lose as much weight as possible within a short period of time (4 months) I want to work out everyday.
Is it healthy to use the treadmill for about an hour a day for 7 days a week?

Thank you very much!!!

This advice was given by Aiming4165 based on his own experience and own beliefs

I need a little more info about you before I can give you real specific advice, whats your current diet, weight, age height etc. Do u have experience in weight training? but ill give you some general advice until you post again,
figure out a resting metabolic rate, and a mantenance calorie intake
get your body fat % tested
1.)theres not really certain excercises that help you lose weight more than others to an extent its mostly about calorie in vs calorie out so your diet is goin to be whats most important you said you have four months right? a safe diet would let you lose anywhere btwn 20-30lbs maybe a little more if your a beginner you dont wanna lose any more than that or your cut down your lean muscle mass. If I wanted to lose weight effectively, I would opt for steady state cardio 3 days a week and 3 days of high intensity (HIIT) and 3 days full body wieght training if time allotted
2.)if your a beginner I could give you a full body routine w/o any weights, so yes but as you get more advanced it becomes more difficult
3.)I wouldnt runn every day for an hour, for fast fat loss id opt for cardio 6days a week and lifting 3/4 cardio becomes less efficient and begins to work against you at about an hour 45 min or even 30-40 of higher intensity, would be better if you can do it for an hour your not pushing yourself hard enough (generally)

Keeping it super-simple:

Diet is the main thing...what you put in your mouth is chiefly going to determine if you lose weight or not. Stick with healthy/whole food and a balanced diet. Shoot for a 20-25% deficit against your maintenance.

Cardio is good...it burns calories as you do it. Many hardcore dieters do it 7 days a week. Listen to your body; if you're sore, hurting, having trouble sleeping, etc...then it may be excessive. At first it'll be challenging, but your body will adapt and you can go further, longer & harder. HIIT is where you do intervals of great intensity, the benefits are burning calories during that time AND afterwards for a few days, it stimulates your metabolism too. Do a search on it, lots of info here.

Weight-training is also excellent...it burns calories as you do it AND stimulates your body for 2-3 days afterwards AND builds more lean muscle that continues to burn calories even when those muscles aren't used.

Word of caution/consideration: when you start doing all this exercise, your body will build more muscle...and muscle weighs more then fat, so don't be surprised if your loss of 5-pounds of fat is offset nearly or entirely by a gain in muscle such that you don't see any movement on the scale. You can lose a LOT of fat, but gain a lot of muscle...all the while the scale hardly moves.

Do NOT let the scale dictate your degree of success. Take pics, take measurements and look into getting your body-fat% determined.

Everyone is different...some people dump weight like its being repelled from their body...other people's bodies cling to fat like it's a critical organ that it can't live without. Your age, genetics, lifestyle, gender....everything comes into play. Don't get discouraged....it's a long & hard path and it's often very hard to see & feel results. Just remember: expecting to see results in the mirror on a day-to-day basis is like watching your hair grow...it's a gradual process but if you stick to it, it'll get easier & easier as it becomes a lifestyle and in the end you will succeed!

1) Based on evidence, HIIT will induce significantly more fat loss than steady state exercise. If you have an exercise bike, intervels of sprinting as hard as you can for 8 seconds followed by 12 seconds of slow peddeling, with a duration of 20minutes (aim).

2) Its possible to do effective strength training with a pir of dumbells, plus a medicine ball and thero bands (which are only an additional 50$ more roughly). So there is absolutely no need to have access to a gym.

3) Using the treadmill is fine 7 days a week, you can change intensity to meet your demands.

A few pointers about fat loss:

- eat lots of fruits and vegatables which are low in calories and fill you up, they also have fat oxidation effects.
- stay away from sugary food especially excessive fructose which inhibits your satiety.
- avoid eating sugrdy food (and protein snacks) before, during, and after exercise which can significantly impede fat loss.

i just wanted to add something else to something i saw posted regarding hiit will burn more calories than steady state, first of all its all about calories in vs calories out so let say you do HIIT for 20 min at high intensity you could have burned about 500 calories in that time frame and HIIT will also increase your resting metabolic rate for some time but many people get hung up on the idea that HIIT will always burn more cals then steady state which isnt true!!!! if you do a moderate jog for 40-45 min you will probably burn more calories with steady state and the increase in metabolic rate leads only to about an extra 50-75cals, in conclusion its more about how much time you want to spend and calories in vs calories out just want to make sure you understand that just in case your newb, personally I got the best results when I made my cardio sessions in about 30-35min long, i run the hell out that 35 min at a little under 6min a mile and after im done i have 900calories under my belt so its kind of acombo btwn HIIT and steady state but try and find me a HIIT routine that lasts 20mins that burns that many calories!!!

so if i wanted to lose as much weight as possible, would it be better to spend more time on the weight training?

i have stoped working out at the moment, but what i did before was:

30 mins of brisk walking
50 mins of running (5 x 10 min runs)
15 minutes light weight training with dumbbells

what should i change or add to it in order to make it most effective?

i reckon i will be able to put aside 2.5 hours a day for excercise.
i know a lot of you will say that the longer your workouts are, the more likely you are to give up. but im pretty good with keeping to long excercise workouts. i just dont like working out in public, so when i go to uni im pretty much screwed and have to stop.

thats why i want to do as much as i can in 4months so i will have enough confidence to work out in public.

^ ???

bump

Look....if you're in such bad shape that you don't even want to workout in public...then you're likely so heavy that just cutting-back on calories and doing some exercise will be more then enough to see some serious results.

I appreciate your intent & enthusiasm to make the most of things, but it really isn't all that huge a battle as you might imagine. You're standing at the bottom of a LONG trail and saying "I need to get to the top asap!"...it's a long road and consistency is the key. You got extra enthuiasm....great; rip it up and go long on the exercise!

Weight-training is important and so is cardio, and dialing-in some HIIT into your cardio will also make the most of it too.

I alternate my days: Tues, Thurs & Saturday are my weights.....I'll do about 1.3 hours of upper-body, back, shoulders, arms, etc...then follow it up with about 40-minutes to 1 hour on the elliptical for my cardio. You wanna do your weights first. Weight-training requires strong energy...energy that can't be derived from the slow-rate of fat oxidation, so for that reason burn the sweet fuel on the muscles first and then follow it up with some solid cardio. I would not reco HIIT after weight-training. The cardio after weight-training is all about capturing some time while your body is in the low-sugar mode and using fat. I hope that makes sense. After doing weights your body is pretty spent and your taping into your fat reserves....so that's why people often say that's a great time to pick-up some cardio and capture some burn while your well into fat-burn mode.

Monday, Wed & Fri is cardio-insane day, this is the place for HIIT: 2 spin-classes back-to-back, maybe some treadmill in between classes for 12-15 minutes, then I swim a mile in the pool. Takes about 3 hours. It's excessive, people think I'm nuts....but I have a saying: Performance, Not enough. I made that up myself!

Usually I try to take Sunday off....but sometimes I'll go biking anyways. I'm dumb & numb like that, but what do I know.

Now...there are 2 reasons you wanna weight-train. One is to build more uscle that will help burn more calories and increase your metabolism....but the other is that weight-training places a burden on those muscles and tells your body (as your dieting) that you NEED these muscles and don't you dare lose 'em for sake of the perceived calorie deficit you're running! Ya can't dump muscles overboard to save weight if you're using 'em!

This isn't rocket science, your splitting hairs with trying to apply perfect science to things...stop typing & start sweating, in fact, sweat daily!

fat loss is really easy, just gotta find your maintance calories and make damn sure you create a defecit through a combination of diet and exercise.

Diet should be your primary focus for fat loss IMO.

But that aside for the moment, the degree of success in using cardio to help you lose fat is all about the effort - frequency, duration, intensity - you put into your cardio. In theory, the more ' effort ' you put in, the more calories you burn, the more fat you'll lose.

Since you seem locked into frequency ( i.e 7 days a week ) and duration ( i.e 2.5 hours a day ) - that leaves intensity. Simply put, when you do cardio, up your cardio intensity - i.e go as hard as you can - so you burn the most calories per minute of exercise....i.e and as BikeSwimLaugh pointed out, HIIT is one way to go about this.

That said, if you do ramp up your intensity, it may allow you cut back a lot on the duration you're allocating to cardio. In other words, you could bump your weight training to 45 minutes to one hour a day every other day and still follow a fat burning HIIT cardio protocol that may only take 30 minutes or so a day a few times per week. For example, Alwyn Cosgrove has a fat burning HIIT regimen that runs over 16 weeks that doesn't go beyond 30 or so minutes per HIIT session.

if by all means you want to spend 2 and a half hours at the gym thats fine i wish I had the time to do the same but I ll give you an example of what my workout schedule is like
Mon- cardio 45min abs
Tues- Lifting 45min cardio 30Min
Wednesday-lower body 30min cardio 30min
Thursday-cardio 45min, and abs
Fri-Sun- Lift 45, cardio for 30min
Im on a cut right now, but to maintain my weight I would have to eat about 3500cals a day, so as you see I dont ever spend more than about an hour an 15min in the gym,

Each individual's body reacts different to a change in diet and exercise. See what works for you. It may take a couple of weeks with some tweaking in terms of cardio and your diet, but itll be worth it.
The key is to ALWAYS push yourself - if you were lazy about cardio one week and didn't see the results you wanted to, there's no one to blame but yourself.
Diet is the most important factor when it comes to weight loss, I think. If you over eat by 1500 cals a day, it's going to be very tough to work that off at the gym (in fact I think it would be nearly impossible or terribly unhealthy to burn that many cals in 24 hours). Exercise is a very important part of losing weight, but it must be used in conjunction with a proper diet. Friends of mine (lazy friends of mine) have lost pounds without ever lifting a finger - they just watched their diets very carefully. You can find tons of advice about eating properly around here, but you have to find what works for you personally.

Good luck

The month between the last post and the bump what have you accomplished?