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Exercise for Weight Control

Exercise provides a broad range of benefits, including strengthening your cardiovascular system, improving your mood and assisting in weight control. While all types of exercise can contribute to weight control to a certain extent, some types are better than others. Making informed choices can improve your progress.

  1. Weight Control Basics

    • Many strategies, including but not limited to exercising regularly, can help you control your weight. At the core of weight control is calorie intake. When you consume too many calories -- your body's source of energy -- the extra energy is stored as body fat. You can burn those extra stores of energy by creating a calorie deficit. To create a calorie deficit, you can simply eat fewer calories or you can burn calories directly through exercise. When you consistently create a calorie deficit, you'll eventually notice significant weight loss. For example, a daily deficit of 500 calories will trigger a loss of 1 pound over the course of a week.

    Exercise Benefits for Weight Control

    • If you don't like the idea of cutting your calorie intake dramatically, exercise can be a powerful weight control ally. Exercise requires energy, so by exercising you increase your daily calorie needs. Raising your calorie needs means that you can also eat more calories and still be in a calorie deficit. Thus, if you exercise enough, you may not have to cut back on your usual calorie intake. Additionally, exercise helps you build muscle, which boosts your metabolism and enables you to burn more calories even when you're not exercising.

    Best Types of Exercise for Weight Control

    • Not all types of exercise are created equally, at least when it comes to calorie-burning efficiency. As you might imagine, the more vigorous the activity, the quicker the rate at which it burns calories. For example, a 160-pound person burns 219 calories per hour while bowling, but can burn 861 calories in the same amount of time if she decides to run at an 8-mph pace instead. Other effective types of exercises for weight control include playing flag football, which burns 584 calories per hour; high-impact aerobics, which burns 533 calories per hour; and tae kwon do, which burns 752 calories per hour.

    Strategies to Increase Weight Control Efficiency

    • Burning calories efficiently for weight control doesn't just depend upon choosing the right exercises. Using high-efficiency exercise techniques can help as well. For example, research published in the June 2012 edition of the "Journal of Obesity" found that interval training -- which consists of brief periods of all-out effort interspersed with periods of moderate effort -- can help burn calories efficiently and improve muscle mass to increase your metabolic rate. Additionally, research published in the "British Journal of Sports Medicine" in 1990 indicates you may burn more calories over the course of the day if you perform your exercise session in two separate halves rather than one long session.

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