by Malia Frey | Reviewed by Richard N. Fogoros, MD | You don’t have to kill yourself at the gym every day to slim down. There are easy exercises to lose weight that you can do at home or on the go. In fact, sometimes easy workouts work better (Photo by Nathan Cowley from Pexels).
Before you try CrossFit, join a hardcore boot camp class, or sign up for heavy duty HIIT program, find out how fast weight loss exercises can speed up weight loss and then incorporate one of these workout routines into your schedule.
To lose weight, you need to create a specific calorie deficit. For example, you might want to reach a 500-calorie deficit each day to lose one pound per week. Or you might set a goal to reach a 1000-calorie daily deficit to lose 2 pounds per week. Either way, you need to control the number of calories you eat and burn more calories with movement to reach your target.
Many dieters start an intense workout plan to slim down. But, sometimes it’s better to do easy exercises to lose weight fast. There are four ways that easy exercise can help you to slim down:
- Improve daily non-exercise movement. Easy workouts are designed to increase your heart rate to burn calories, but they shouldn’t wear you down. So you don’t feel the need to take a nap or lay on the couch all day after doing a workout. This helps you to stay active throughout the day and boost the number of calories you burn from NEAT.
- Exercise every day. When you do easy workouts, you can exercise every day. Hard exercise, on the other hand, requires a recovery day following the session. When you work out daily (instead of 2-3 days per week) you may be able to burn more calories from exercise.
- Maintain a consistent exercise program. Even though intense exercise is effective for weight loss, hard workouts put your body at a higher risk for injury and burnout. And you’re not likely to burn enough calories for weight loss while you’re recovering on the couch. Easy workouts are usually safer for your body and may allow you to be more consistent, week to week and month to month.
- Keep hunger levels steady. Hard workouts often increase hunger levels. And sometimes they even increase your sense of entitlement to food. For example, you might feel that you deserve a high-calorie meal or treat after hard exercise because you earned it with your effort. But easy workouts are less likely to leave you starving. The result is that you may eat less with an easy fitness program.
If you are healthy enough for vigorous activity, hard workouts are good for your body. High-intensity exercise helps to build muscle and burn fat. But easy workouts can speed up weight loss, too.
The Easy Workouts
There are two easy workout routines listed below. Choose a fitness plan based on your current level of fitness and health.
1. Easy Exercise Routine for Beginners
This plan works well for people who don’t exercise at all. The easy exercises will jolt your metabolism out of lazy mode and get it moving again. But to make this plan work, you need to keep your workouts short and manageable. That way, you never have an excuse to skip a session.
For this plan, you’ll exercise 1-3 times each day, but each workout won’t last long. You don’t need to change clothes, you probably won’t get too sweaty and you don’t need any extra equipment.
Easy beginner workout:
- 7 minutes fast walk
- 7 minutes of easy lunges and easy push ups
- 7 minutes fast walk
You can do this workout at a local park, at your office, or in your home.Set reminders on your smartphone to remind yourself to complete your sessions. Or better yet, recruit a friend to hold you accountable.
Need more of a challenge? Swap brisk stair climbing for walking. If you are at work, climb the office stairs, do lunges on the landing and push-ups against the wall.
Why this easy fitness plan works: The duration of the workout makes it easier to tolerate and more likely that you’ll stick to the plan. And even though the workouts are short, you are still burning substantial calories in a short period of time. Done properly three times per day, you can burn up to 300 – 500 calories. If you do this easy workout around mealtime, you’ll probably also shorten the amount of time you spend eating which will help you to decrease the amount of food you want to consume.
2. Easy Exercise Routine for Regular Exercisers
Your easy workout will consist of adding 30-45 minutes of easy enjoyable activity at the opposite end of your day as your normal workout:
- If you work out in the morning, add a brisk evening walk to your schedule.
- If you exercise in the evening, consider biking or walking to work in the morning.
Why this easy fitness plan works: It’s common for people who exercise regularly to do the same routine week after week. If you do the same exercises at the same intensity all the time you’ll get the same results. Your body hits a plateau. This plan increases your activity level without added stress or strain to your joints. So you burn more calories without taxing your body.
Boost Your Easy Exercise Routine for Faster Weight Loss
Your new easy exercise routine will help you burn more calories. But you can lose weight faster by adding these challenges:
- Skip dessert for a week. Grab a small serving of berries instead
- Skip the drinks that cause weight gain and drink water instead. Not a fan of water? Learn to make flavored water to curb your cravings.
- Dump starch. Instead of eating empty calorie white foods like bread, white rice or pasta, fill up on a variety of lean protein and good carbs.
Turn Fast Weight Loss into Long-Term Success
If you stick to your easy workout routine, you should see some change in the scale or in the way your clothes fit after a week or two. Then ask yourself this question: was it worth it?
If the answer is yes, then keep your easy fitness plan going. You may even want to make it more challenging by adding moderate exercise and high intensity sessions. Then start tracking your diet to make sure you eat the right amount of protein to lose weight and maintain muscle.
If the answer is no, don’t worry. Even an easy exercise plan requires a big commitment. You may not have been ready for the investment. But don’t give up entirely. Choose a few parts of the plan that seem manageable and try to incorporate them into your schedule. Your weight loss will happen more slowly, but at least it will happen.
Malia Frey is a certified weight management specialist, certified health coach, certified personal trainer, and certified fitness nutrition specialist. Malia has been helping people reach their fitness and weight loss goals for over 25 years. She has taught health, exercise, and wellness classes in colleges, universities, hospitals and fitness centers around the country. She is the weight loss expert at Verywell and provides expert diet and exercise advice to both print and online sources including About.com, Muscle & Fitness, Zliving, GetHealthyU, Examiner.com, Worldlifestyle.com, Diet.com, North Memorial Medical Center and many more.. Her passion for good health inspires her to stay active, eat well (most of the time) and encourage others to do the same. Connect with Malia on Facebook, Google, Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter, or visit her website The Daily Diet Tip for more weight loss support and tips.
